Life, Death and the Search for Solid Ground

Of all the people in the world I don’t know very well, one of my favorites is Jesse Mendez, a young man who serviced my septic system. He is in his late 20s, with short black hair spreading back from a peak that points downward to a wide, cognizant face. He is well-built, well-spoken and intelligent. His occasional visits were something I looked forward to, discounting the fact that a basic pump job costs $150.

Because I live on a hillside, most of the local septic service companies were unwilling to take me on as a customer. In fact, Jesse Mendez at A-Able was the only one who would take me on. I heard tales of woe from every sewer/septic outfit in the county: Our trucks are too big; our trucks are too small; our hoses are too short; our pumps are too weak; we have too much work already; we are in a recession and aren’t working much.

“I’ll be there at 6,” said Jesse.

He was. He guided his F-600 pump truck up the precarious hill with a skillful dexterity. He found a flat place to park, even though the flat space wasn’t much bigger than the truck itself. He muscled the hose up the hill, fed it into the tank and pumped out the stuff. He attached a riser to make the job easier next time. He added three bags of caustic soda, a substance that helps clean the walls of septic systems.

I hovered about, because I like watching people work when they know what they’re doing. We talked about his equipment, the 1,800-gallon capacity of the truck, the difficulties of guiding a full load down a steep, narrow road. The job took about an hour. When he was finished, I thanked him, paid him and told him I admire people who do their work well.

“It’s just pumping crap,” said Jesse.

So our relationship began, and it lasted for 1 1/2 years. We saw each other fairly often because the tank filled up quickly and wouldn’t leach out into the bedrock in which it was stationed. I looked forward to his visits. We talked about our respective jobs, our families, politics, the county, the gangs in his Santa Ana neighborhood, his sister--a TV personality on Channel 34’s “Tele Musica” program Saturday afternoons.

Something in our brief encounters reminded me of the poet Marianne Moore’s immortal observation: “Superior people never make long visits.”

One day he suggested that I build a graywater system to divert some water to the hillside plants and reduce the stress on the tank. He told me exactly how to do it and offered to come over on a Saturday to help. I listened, aware that Jesse was offering to put himself out of business--out of my business, anyway.

I didn’t take up his offer of help, but I did have the graywater system built. It worked so well that I didn’t see Jesse again for almost a year.

When I did see him, it was not on the job but in the parking lot of a local market. At first, I didn’t even know he was there. I had just gotten out of my car and paused beside it because the market seemed so far away. It was one of those days when you don’t have enough energy to do much more than look down and see what your feet are going to do next. In this instance, they did nothing. So I stared at what was in front of me, namely, a mint-condition, gleaming white Ford LN 700 pump truck with a 2,100-gallon capacity tank, a fresh clay-colored hose tipped by a net aluminum coupling, chromed wheels and lug nuts. The rig was dazzlingly bright, meticulously tended. It was like standing next to a NASA gadget on display.

He walked across the lot from the phone booth. It was a hot day; he was sweating and pale. We shook hands.

“Nice to see you, Jesse.”

“Nice to see you.”

“It’s been a while.”

“Is your wife still OK?”

“No. She didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, man.”

“Thank you. We saw it coming.”

“I lost my other brother last week. He was walking back from a baptism, and they shot him.”

The February sun shined against the handsome pump truck. The pigeons by the dumpster pecked for food. From the health food store across the street wafted the perpetual stink of incense, a smell that, for my money, never made sense coming from a food store proffering health.

“I didn’t know you lost your other brother,” I said.

“The gangs shot him, too. He wasn’t one of them. None of us were. Our family has been in the same house in Santa Ana for 20 years.”

“You holding up?”

“I’m having trouble working. I think I might sell the truck, get out of the business.”

On the streets around us, the traffic was sparse. The winter light was clean but frugal, no doubt withholding its generosity for spring.

Jesse said, “I got a Porsche cheap, but I’ve only had it out of the garage twice. Once I went to the store. The other time the cop pulled me over and said ‘how’d a guy like you get a car like that?’ and I said ‘I worked for it, man, how do you think?’ but they shook me down anyway, right in front of my girlfriend. The papers were fine. It was my car. You can’t drive a car like that where I live without somebody getting all over you.”

Jesse wiped the sweat from his wide forehead. It was clear that his mind was not on cars. “Ernie was lying in the street when we got there,” he said quietly. “Blood in the gutter. They shot him in the back with an AK-47. How could anybody do that to another human being? Ever since then, ever since I saw him there, I don’t know--it’s like nothing’s real.”

I didn’t say anything right then, but I knew the feeling. First nothing is real, then everything is real. It’s all there, and then it isn’t. You can’t see back, and you can’t look forward. The loss accumulates faster than your ability to stack it. You can do nothing well, no matter how small, while what you want, more than anything in the world, is to do something big.

“I just feel like staying in bed all the time. So I’m thinking about getting out of the business,” he said, again.

The big pump truck stood beside us, solid as faith. The thought crossed my mind that it could do a lot of things a person couldn’t, but not one of them without someone to tell it when and where.

“I wouldn’t try to tell you how to live,” I said. “But let me just say one thing. Don’t do anything now. Later, things might make a little more sense. The only thing you could do now would be something wrong.”

We shook hands and he said he’d think about that. The market door was still 1,000 miles away, but my feet began the journey. If the tank fills up again, I thought, I hope Jesse’s still on this earth to call.

Last week I tried. He is.