They used to be just punks.  Some skated.  Some squatted.  Most smoked cigarettes.  Some were skinheads. Who knows if they were truly hateful.  It's hard to say.

They spit all over the side walk.  They gave the finger.  It's a good day to get the finger.  Sunny days are good days.  If the sun is hot enough, the spit dries up and you don't have to walk through in your Converse.  It's about this time that Converse ships manufacturing overseas, and that bothers some but not others.
 
Then there is Cody.  I want cigarettes so I give Cody ten bucks.  I tell him I want Camels but he comes out with Newports.  When I ask for them anyway Cody tells me to get lost, that I'm beat and there's nothing I can do about it.  If I can just bum a couple, I ask.  He gives me a few Newports and I light one.  I try to inhale but cough hard.  Must be all the fiberglass in the menthol, I explain.

***

A Starbucks was under construction on the corner.  It was being built with a big overhanging patio.  When it's done the punks mingle with the hippies that came with the place.  They talk about all sorts of shit.  Everyone gets high.  For a summer it is acoustic guitars, free love and whatever that's supposed to mean. 
I squat on the patio one day.  Then I squat the next day.  Then everyday after that.  Cody squats.   He squats better than anyone, anyone in town, all day long.  Our hours are the same.  We put in the same shift. I pay for Camels and together we smoke Newports. 

Soon customers complain.  Capitalists.  The same polo-wearing, Lexus-driving, vegetarian, Buddha-guru-pacifists.  Pacifists are afraid.  Pacifists can't take spit or the finger.  All they can do is wet the bed.  Bed-wetters.  It takes a hard ass to squat.  My parents couldn't understand it.  You need to work, they say.  You need to make money.  Money for what, I ask.  You gotta be a hardass to do what I do.  They should have been proud.

A customer-only policy is enforced and all the vagrants, no one knew what else to call them, take to drinking ice tea.  It wasn't good but it was cheap, and Starbucks was selling more of their ice tea than they ever had before. 
 
It tastes like dog piss, Cody says.  He asks me for a cigarette and I don't have one.  I give him ten dollars and don't see him until later that afternoon when the paramedics escort him out on a stretcher, slapping his face.  He bled all over the bathroom.  Police took care of the hypodermic and the spoon.  The blood and vomit had to be scrubbed out of the carpeting, which was already red so it wasn't too big a deal except that no one was allowed back.  It's unfair, it's discriminatory, it's un-American, the squatters said.  Our money is just as good as their money, how can they do this, they all asked.
 
The vagrants moved behind the newsstand next to the Starbucks, a closet hidden from the rest of town.  They cram into the closet and occasionally police patrol but rarely.  A family unknowingly parks in there.  The wife holds the baby while the father unpacks the stroller and locks up the Volvo.  The woman looks pretty good in her thirties, pushing the baby in the stroller, ass working in her tights.  She's probably a gym rat and bulimic as hell.  I hope to god it's a crack baby in that thing. 

***

Cody and I get to talking.  He says he’s got nothing to live for and no where to live anyway.  He's been either sleeping around apartments or slumming it in the gazebos at the golf course. 
A sleeping bag sure would be nice, he says. 

I tell him I have all sorts of camping equipment at my house.  In the attic I find an old two person Coleman tent and give him a sleeping bag and a pack to carry it all on.  They all have my tags sewn in but the stuff will carry him through any weather. 

Thanks man, he said, you're a life saver.  I saved Cody's life.

***

Sometime later in a Play-It-Again Sports, I came across a tent and sleeping back and pack with.  They had my tags sewn in.  They were being sold very cheap.  I figured everyone had won.  Cody got some quick money and some family would buy the equipment and go camping in the great outdoors away from all this.  It was all very good survival equipment.  I would have bought it back myself if I could have afforded it.
 
I took a job at a greasy fast food chicken restaurant.  It's just down the street from the newsstand.  Customers walk through and all you have to say is:  welcome to Market Feast, sir, tonight we've got the Chicken-For-Four, Ready To Score on special.  Thing of it is, the For-Four is actually a great deal and I never felt as if I was ripping anyone off.  But the customers are always convinced it's a trick, in some way they are getting ripped off.

The restaurant offers an assortment of sides.  Everything from sweet potatoes to fried zucchini.  Customers generally stick to the mashed potatoes, corn, and macaroni and cheese.  Sometimes you don't even have to listen to the order.  You can just tell.  Like when some heavy guy in an over-starched shirt and wire-rimmed glasses waddles in at five-thirty, you can just tell.  You can tell his job is hell.  You can tell he is treated like a dog and all that matters at the end of the day is eating that white meat right off the bone like an aristocrat.  The macaroni and cheese is a guilty pleasure.  I couldn’t enjoy my job too much either so we all understood.       

***

Before work I like to sit on the curb behind the newsstand and Cody sits down next to me.  I get a cigarette and I give him a cigarette and he lights them.  Supposedly a guy is going be around with a big bag of shrooms and people are gathering.  But Cody has no money and can only sit and pretend. 
Man I wish I had some money, he says, is that too much to ask for, just a lot of money?
I dunno, I say. 

I'll tell you what I would do with a lot of money, he says.  I'd buy a fat sack of blue caps.  And I'd buy a whole pizza and I'd put ‘em on the pizza and eat it all.  And then I would buy myself a car, a Porsche or some shit.  I'd pay a thousand dollars more than it cost and I'd throw it on the ground, cash.  I'd say keep the change, chump.  I’d drive and I’d be gone.

We sit on the curb and try to figure out some ways for Cody to get money.  I offer him a job at Market Feast.  He says the job is too capitalist, that the business is too savage.  Too many chickens slaughtered.  He said it was blood money. 

The newsstand sells lottery tickets, I tell him.

Man, I'm gonna win that jackpot, man, fucking millions, he says. 

I tell him that his chances of winning anything will be better if he plays the scratch-offs. He listens.  He only has so many dollars anyway.

Cody comes back outside with a handful of scratch offs.  He asks me if I'd eat shrooms with him.  I explain that I couldn't, that I have work and that I can't get out of it because if I wasn't there to spit and cook the chicken, dice it all up, pre-heat the shams and prep all the sides, serve all the chicken, and ring it all up on the register, no one will.  And if no one does then business would be lost.  If business was lost I'd be out of a job.  If I was out of a job, I'd be forced to the lottery to survive and it was easier to get treated like a dog than to get by on luck.

Well okay, he says.  He scratched off some tickets. 

Holy fucking hell! He says. 

Cody won forty dollars.  That would afford him an eighth of shrooms, the blue caps.  And he'd have another five dollars left over for a couple slices of pizza to eat them with.  He jumps up in the air and hugs me and says after this he'd be getting a job and turning his life around.  He said that this was proof that a god does exist and that he would start going to church or some shit. 

Cody cashes his winning ticket and we sit on the pavement and wait for the guy.  We each smoke another cigarette and throw some pebbles at the cement wall.  We wait and wait until finally I about have to go to work. 

Cody, I say getting up from the sidewalk, I don't think the guy is coming. 

No, he's coming man.  I know he's coming.

***

A week ago I was named the new senior shift supervisor at the restaurant.  I was given keys to the store and instead of the blue company polo shirt, I wear a company issue silver oxford shirt.  I'm now paid on a salary but for the amount of hours I put in, I might as well be paid wages.  Regardless, I make a lot more money.

A few new kids have been hired and my job has been to train them.  I don't recognize them and they don't know me.  They tell me they've never heard of Cody.  I'm not really familiar with their drugs…assorted pills, glamour drugs. 

They are undoubtedly the newest punks.  They come in high.  They talk fast.  They move fast.  Sometimes they take their cigarette breaks too close to the entrance.  Customers complain, but what can you do.  And while the work attire includes all black, slip resistant shoes, they insist on wearing their chucks.  Against my better judgment, I pretty much let it sly. 

I see the new kids ringing up customers and sometimes I have to politely explain to them that when offering drinks or desserts with each meal, it's important to emphasize the drinks and desserts.  It truly improves business, predicting the customer subconscious.  When the customer accepts, they're supposed to offer the twenty cent beverage upgrade.  The thing of it is that the restaurant has a fountain beverage station.  This means the customers can get as many re-fills as they want.  Paying for the twenty cent upgrade for a cup that's four ounces bigger is senseless when re-fills are unlimited. 

But we make the money and we get paid.  At the end of the night I like to sit down with my crew and offer them each a cigarette.  We light up the cigarettes and blow smoke in the air.