Will Work for Column

She looked like one of the Joads in “The Grapes of Wrath,” or maybe a brave country woman trying to save her farm. Call her Beth.

I noticed her parked along the ocean, sitting on a folding chair by an old camper, holding a sign that said, “Will work for gas.”

A girl about 10 stood next to her in a pose out of a Grant Wood painting. She had one hand on her mother’s shoulder and was staring out at the passing traffic with the kind of sad-sweet look that could melt glaciers.

She reminded me of Tatum O’Neal selling Bibles in “Paper Moon.”

I stopped because I’ve been doing a sort of survey on people who hold will-work-for signs. Will work for food. Will work for gas. Will work.

What they want, of course, is not to work at all but to have you give them money so they won’t have to. It’s a nice idea, but not the way the system is supposed to function.

Of a half-dozen will-work men I talked to, not one wanted the job I offered. I said I’d pay $5 an hour for digging with a pick and shovel.

One said it wasn’t his kind of work. His kind of work was playing the flute. When I said I had no work for flautists but would still pay him for digging, he passed.

When I left without giving him money, he gave me something: the finger.

I swear I’d seen Beth before, and her little girl too. A mother and daughter approached me by a bank machine once and said they were from Fresno and were trying to raise money to get home.

It had scam written all over it. I said, “Why would anyone want to go to Fresno?”

My response caught her off-guard for a moment. Then she realized I was a wise-ass non-giver and her look of helpless vulnerability sharpened to piercing hostility.

Without saying another word, she jerked the little girl by the arm and headed off down the block, half-dragging the kid with her.

When I mentioned to Beth that she looked like a woman from Fresno, there was a flicker of apprehension in her eyes, but she recovered quickly and said she’d never been to Fresno. She kept looking at me as though she were trying to remember who I was.

“Where you going?” I asked.

“Nowhere in particular,” she said.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Here and there.”

“What’s your name?” I asked the child.

“She don’t talk,” Beth said quickly. Then: “You a cop?”

I told her I was a journalist. She said she didn’t have time to answer questions unless I was willing to pay.

The little girl was looking at me all this time as though she had something to say but didn’t dare say it.

She may have been play-acting, the way Tatum was, but there’s still a sweetness to children that can’t be denied. That’s why they’re used so often in con games.

“We don’t pay for stories,” I said, “but I’ll give you $5 if you let me look in your camper.”

She rose, closed the folding chair and said “Let’s go” to the kid.

The girl lingered for a moment and I slipped her the five anyhow. She touched my hand momentarily, half-smiled and was gone.

I keep remembering that touch.

There’s no doubt in my mind it was a scam. Santa Monica Police Sgt. John Miehle, who knows about these things, said I was right.

“Some of those people make fortunes,” he said. “One guy stands at the corner of Lincoln and Olympic with a will-work sign. He’s there every day. That’s his job.

“Three-hundred thousand cars pass that intersection during a 24-hour period. If the guy gets a dollar from 1/10th of 1% of those cars, he’s making $300 a day. Why should he do anything else?”

One couple, a man and woman, wait until parking lots close for the day and are free, and stand at the entryway, collecting parking fees.

Others hang around gas stations where you don’t have to pay before you pump. They put gasoline in the cars of customers, collect the money and split.

The will-work signs began popping up about a year ago. Miehle checked out one sign-carrier who carried a wad of money the size of a baseball. He’d gotten it from people who can’t offer a job but can’t stand to see anyone hungry, either. So they give a buck.

Miehle says don’t give money to individuals, give it to social service organizations. He’s right, I guess.

I shouldn’t have given the kid the fiver. She probably threw it in mama’s barrel with a hundred other fives or bought beer with it, but what the hell.

The touch of a child’s hand is more powerful than a man’s fist. Maybe she’ll remember me someday on the long, lonely road to nowhere-in-particular.