FLOWERS ON A CLIFF OUT OF THE FOG

FLOWERS ON A CLIFF OUT OF THE FOG(L DOUGLAS ST OURS) FLOWERS ON A CLIFF OUT OF THE FOG


I got dropped off by, to my eyes, a homely young woman who eleven days earlier earned a masters degree in speech therapy, and who instead of flying coast to coast, drove her car overland to see the sights before starting her dream job of teaching stutterers not to stutter. For nearly three thousand miles I had been her passenger and we had never met before I got into her car.

She decided to take the long way to San Jose, driving through the northern tier, detouring just once for Yellowstone and within one thousand miles of Virginia I ran out of money but still remained pleasant, doing most of the driving, even changing her flat tyre, and for the rest of the journey as we got into and past North Dakota, she constantly worried out loud about breaking down in an empty place with no one around.

Her plain jane looks and her nagging tone drained every last drop of desire on my part for any sex, when she'd check into a motel, I'd sleep in the car, which was probably why in the last couple of days she got irritable to the point that when we said our goodbyes, she apologized "for being a bitch."

This was 1971 and the third time I made the trek west and I was by then an experienced carpenter.
California was booming with high expectations for making more money than I was earning in central Virginia. But to my dismay in this American el dorado, you couldn't hammer a single nail unless you belonged to the union.

And you couldn't sign on for the union trade until you apprenticed and there was so many applicants on that list that I was looking at up to a two year wait. So I took any job I could find in a town built on the picking of lettuce, artichokes, strawberries, flowers, and garlic after taking a $20 a week bed in a rooming house where I shared a bath and a common table with migrant bums like me.

On a tip, I hitched a ride a few miles out in the country and just randomly had the driver let me out at a farm with solid buildings and a hopeful sign surrounded as it was by flat meadows and golden hills. I walked the long drive and soon discovered that the dots in the distance were people.

I passed through a gate and encountered the landowner, a bearded Berkeley grad, maybe thirty, his appearance reminded me of a skinny version of Friar Tuck. Considering his radical pedigree alma mater, I wrongly assumed he'd be hip to the people's struggle. Real soon I learned that this erstwhile free speeching agitator was about the bottom line squeezing all the costs he could wring out of labor.

For within a week of hiring me, he would fire me because I couldn't come near matching the productivity of the Chicanos who toiled like drones in a hive, even the unschooled children out produced me. During those five days in the flower fields I stooped, snipped stems, tied them in bunches, dragged them in a sack, and dropped a barrel of sweat.

I would often pause to wipe my brow and for a moment or two watch the progress and retreat of the daily fog bank, a cloud monster, an ethereal wall draping and smothering like a gray veil thick, stuck, and hung over the eucalyptus some standing straight and some bent low by a fissure of the San Andreas fault.

Sun up to sun down entire migrant families labored six days a week. They took in stride and were never slowed by backaches and sore muscles I suffered from the bending and repetitive yanking, not to mention the blistered palms and fingers slit bloody by the razor sharp shoots.

I was the only field hand who could speak English, that and my tallness made me stand out like a poppy in a petunia garden. The wetbacks were understandably suspicious about my motives, stealing quick glances and whispering to each other then nodding in furtive agreement.

On my last day upon hearing on the grapevine of my imminent departure, the Mexicans set aside their fears of me being some kind of undercover agent. The straw hatted men, their pretty wives, and their bronze children gathered around me like I was a reincarnation of their savior.

Tentatively the bravest one stepped forward and in deference to me, held his hat in his hand. Bashfully he asked in broken English to teach them "American sex words." Gratified and inspired I shared the essence of the slang I knew "f**k" and "pussy" and "cock" and all the rest.

And the men, standing behind the earnest women and the dishrag kids, gazed at me and bowed, enraptured as if I had emerged out of that fog like a ghost or a god casting a miracle followed by a sermon on and about literally "the mount."

And when I was finished they faithfully returned to the fields repeating, practicing, and pronouncing the wondrous words I had spoken. With that lesson over and my job done, I decided to walk towards the misty shroud fading before me like a dying dancer.

Suddenly a clearing revealed a cliff
where I stood overlooking the ocean
crashing hard against haystack rocks.
There I became entranced
by elephant seals preening and bellowing
between the sea and the sky.
I wondered if they were even vaguely aware
of the orcas and great whites
that would kill them tomorrow
but not today.

by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
April 2010