(from college journal
1980-81)
Eventually the best
part of the job was out on the road.
There is freedom and
driving about where there is none in the warehouse;
It got so bad at the
warehouse I was constantly looking over my shoulder for Donald always wondering
what kind of wisecrack he would come up with next.
For us the Christmas
rush started in late August which meant I was on the road a lot starting then.
That first year it
was rough because business picked up dramatically and Stanley and I had to bust
to get stuff packed and sent.
Donald also had this
nasty habit of not telling anyone till late that I had to go out to get
something.
This left Stanley
stranded in a sea of unpacked merchandise. This left me with something of a guilty
feeling and caused me to learn to rush from stop to stop.
Then one day near
enough Christmas for us for business to slacking Donald shouted at me telling
me I have to go to New York.
It was 3 and I was
supposed to meet Paulie and Hank
“I have to go New
York?” I asked, as if half believing I had misheard him.
“Yeah,” Donald said,
snapping open his private cabinet and unpacking several bottles of Joy perfume
and Shalimar.
He told me to strip
the tags off the goods he gave me, and seemed angry, making me a bit paranoid,
since Donald got angry often, and sometimes over something insignificant.
I asked him if there
was something wrong, taking the bottles from him. He paused seemed a little
disoriented as if he couldn't figure out for himself whether he was angry or
not. Then he looked at me his now gaze ran over, and he laughed harshly.
“I'm not mad at you
if that's what you're worried about,” he said.
I sputtered and then turned my attention
towards the boxes.
“Why would I be
worried?” I said and yet deep down I was relieved.
Stanley heard some of
this and came up from the back pulling a pallet jack and a pallet. He addressed
Donald asking why he was sending me out now.
Donald didn't answer
he didn't even look up, but his neck stiffened, and I knew that it was Stanley
who Donald was angry with.
“Don't worry,” he
told Stanley, “you won't have to stay late and wait for him.”
Stanley slammed back
the handle to the pallet jack and swore
“That's not what it's
about and you know it, I don't mind working the hours,” he said and then
stuttered to a stop.
“You just don't think
you're making enough money,” Donald said easing closed the doors to his special
stash, his stubby hands pressing against the flat metal like he was preventing
the cabinet from falling.
“No, I don't think
I'm making enough for the hours I work but it was my wife who complained not me,”
Stanley said putting his clipboard down on the work table.
He gripped his pencil
though like a knife
“So, go home nobody's
stopping you if you're damned wife can't live without her husband then I'm
sorry for her,” Donald said, his hand dropped from the cabinet and he handed me
the packing list to check. I counted the bottles and the items and handed it
back then he walked back up towards the office.
Stanley stared down
at his clipboard. But he wasn't reading the items there he was just staring
then he looked up at me his hound like eyes for the first time looked mean. Then
he relaxed a little when he realized he was looking at me and not Donald.
“Don't you think
you'd better get going,” he said. You don't want to get back at midnight.
I nodded and sealed the box and then headed
for the van
The van was a bright
red Dodge with windows all around. Stanley had argued against the color when
Donald first bought it, saying that it was all too obvious and that the police
could pick up on it easier.
Stan was unusually
aware of police speeding traps because of own experience with them he had 12
points on his license from speeding tickets and was on the verge of losing his
license because of them.
And it wasn't that he
was reckless. He told me stories about his younger days when he was, but he had
calmed down since his marriage. He was simply the unfortunate schmuck in a line
of cars doing 60 and he was the one to get caught.
I had yet to get
caught speeding although I did a lot of it. My specialty was parking tickets
over which Donald had a fit but then it wasn't an easy feat parking legally in
New York City.
I climbed in the van
and started the engine there was power under me a terrible frightening power
that thrilled me in a special way. I
wasn't particularly excited about the speed just freedom. The job was perfect
for being on my own, using my head.
Donald waved at me
from the door and I stopped he ran out with a couple of memos and stuffed them
through the window.
Two more stops, he
said, and I nodded as I looked at them.
It was Friday and he
had me going uptown and downtown and after 3.
I might just be back
at midnight, I thought. But I wasn't about to argue not then.
Some other time I
might have pointed out that it would take me forever with the New York weekend traffic,
but his face was tight in the lines around his nose and mouth deep; he was in
no mood for argument
“Okay,” I said and
backed out watching him as he turned back to go inside.
Donald was a short man, a Jewish Napoleon with
blond hair and blue eyes, eyes when stern were often exaggerated by the glasses
he wore.
But then everything
about him was exaggerated, his clothing was rich, his haircut fine and
carefully cut, and his manner was that of an executive.
He turned to watch me
then vanished in the door as I drove around the end of the building heading for
Bloomfield Avenue.
Once on the road
again, I was gunning it. I had little
patience with traffic weaving in and out of lanes like I owned them. This was
quite different from my first day when I crashed into the back of a Mercedes.
I was going to New York then to and that made
me laugh.
I slowed on the highway
by the light only because the police had a nasty habit of hiding behind the
hedges in front of the restaurant. I had
seen enough other suckers fall into that. But then by Willowbrook I was gunning
it again.
The secret was to
sneak through the tunnel before heavy traffic started and rush up the West Side
Up 11th or 10th.
I had a trick for
cutting through the park too, but I wouldn't try that now. Fridays were
miserable that way, so I would put up with 57th Street across town somehow
traveling up and down the East Side involved extreme hardship
I sailed on to Route
3.
This wasn't the way I
normally went to New York unless I was headed to see Donald’s mother, Ruth at
the Kearny store -- so there was something adventurous about it.
There were still a
few fluffs of dirty plowed snow along the side of the road and the air was cold
and crisp and smelled of Christmas.
But pain went through
me with that this Christmas, creating a kind of bittersweet spice over the fact
that I would be spending another Christmas without my wife or seeing my kid.
Louise had called,
but after meeting her near Scranton, I discovered that she only really wanted
me to agree to a divorce.
The van rolled pass
the Nevins print factory on Route 3 where Louise and I had met five years
earlier. It only made the feelings more intense.
Traffic thickened and
so it put Louise out of my mind for a time, but it came back, and I had to struggle
with it and the bumper to bumper insanity of the helix winding down towards the
mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel.
I was annoyed, yet
knew that traffic might lighten up once through the tunnel, after which
different feelings emerged, nostalgic feelings of those days when I worked at a
messenger in New York, and did largely what I did not, and returning here like
this before the holiday, felt a little like me being a prodigal son returning finally
to a place I felt most comfortable at.
Once the city gets
into your blood, you can’t get rid of it.
The truck vibrated
over the potholes and bumps and I laughed the sidewalk Santa's with their
tinkling bills, the red suits wrinkled, the belts holding up padding showing
through the fabric.
Yes, it was a flavor
here that that I savored, a fine wine that seemed to bubble out of the air with
the clouds of subway steam.
I turned uptown half
humming some old Christmas carol.
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