I got into Fresno absurdly early. It was 6am. I had a seven hour layover. It was empty. Heavens to Mergatroid it was empty. It was like an episode from one of those "The World Without People" shows that were such a big fad a couple of years ago. National Geographic did one. BBC America did another. The Discovery Channel did one, too. Even the History Channel got in on the act, albeit with really cheap CGI effects.
I never quite got the lure of all that. What was the didactic purpose of this kind of show? Was it a gentle reminder that all human beings shouldn't just up and leave the planet and our pets behind one day? Was it a warning to God not to rapture off the lot of us without first bestowing toolmaking skills and opposable thumbs onto the housecats? I never considered the spontaneous removal of 7 billion people to be much of a realistic concern. But at least I do know now that, if all human beings up and vanished one fine Sunday morning, the Earth would look a lot like Fresno.
Life has not been kind to Fresno. The people at the station seemed sad all the time; no one smiled. None of them cared to engage in a conversation, assuming they possessed the skills to do so. Fresno is where boring people come, or at least where interesting people get away from. In addition to being utterly bereft of the cultural distinctiveness that the rest of California displays, the economy is, apparently, utterly down the tubes. Many of the storefronts downtown were shuttered. Sometimes whole buildings appeared abandoned. And for a small city, Fresno seemed to have an unusually large number of homeless people—exclusively homeless men—waking up in the park and milling about.
The first guy I saw showed every sign of having died. He laid face flat on a grass island in downtown's open air mall. He didn't seem to breathe. A bird landed near him and flitted away, as if repulsed. Nearby homeless guys who looked new to the roofless life, judging by their grooming, ignored their prostrate compatriot. Only the faintest flicker of his lips up close revealed him to be a heavy sleeper. He smelled of stale Mad Dog, not death. Later in the morning a city grounds crew showed up to operate loud machinery next to him. They ignored him, as if he were a fixture in the mall. He never stirred from his coma.
The other homeless men were awake by 8am. Like California, they lacked any ethnic majority. Most were cleanish, considering their circumstances. Two huddled over a weak drinking fountain and scraped safety razors across their stubble. It was Sunday; gotta look your best. They sat in a semi circle, talked small, and watched the sunlight creep down along the few tall buildings. These were the first people in town to give me actual smiles when I offered them my signature Buckaroo "Howdy®."
(NB: It is delivered with a nonchalant earnestness, an imperceptible bob of the head, and a subtle crinkling of the lower lip, as if to indicate equal parts engagement and detachment. Although its etymology runs from the "How'd'ye do" noted by Frederick Law Olmstead in his 19th Century travel journals through Texas prior to the Civil War, the Buckaroo "Howdy" is discernibly a salutation only, and not an invitation to expound upon just how well you are doing. The homeless men of Fresno seemed instinctively to get that, or at least didn't want to talk to me.)
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| Click to read the signboard |
As the homed residents of Fresno broke from their slumbers and began to filter into the city, the homeless disappeared, filing off one by one like movie extras. They surrendered their only home to the four-walled Americans. Perhaps their presence offended them, perhaps they were responding to that vestigial migratory call that had rendered them homeless in the first place. We're all the children of nomads, after all. Who's to say being sedentary isn't the aberration? How can we be sure the perversion doesn't lie in having good hygiene and being well rested in the morning?
It was a sunny Sunday morning. It was time for me to find a church.
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