I Work With These Men

I Work With These Men

by Sam Ford

I was 19 years-old, grinding out an early morning job, and drinking a lot of beer and whiskey at night. The job was for a landscaping company called Garland’s, and their clients and customers included some of the wealthiest folks in the United States of America. I’d originally gotten hired on to work at one of the cash registers inside the central store that sat right smack in the middle of the company’s nine-acre property. The store sold everything from trowels and spades to seeds to plastic gargoyles. I was gonna’ stand behind a cash register and scan the items with one a’ those red lasers and it was gonna’ appear on the computer screen and I was gonna’ tell the customer the amount and then he or she was gonna’ hand me some money or some plastic. Even though I was doing some serious drinking, I was still a fairly able bodied fella’ back then and it didn’t take my bosses long to realize that I’d be better used “in the field.” They also discovered that I spoke I tiny bit of Spanish when one of them overheard me talking to one of the gardeners while we were on a smoke break. Next thing I knew I was given my own van and a crew of three Mexicans – Julio, Jose, and Miguel. I was told to deliver plants, flowers, and even small trees to places. I was told to plant them. Julio, Jose, and Miguel were told to assist me.

It was summer. I had no woman, no car, and not a whole lot of exciting ideas. After my workday was done, I’d go over to a tavern called Kempner’s on the town’s main street. It was a meat and potatoes joint. Mostly older folks would eat there – bleu cheese on their hamburgers, baked potatoes, soups, ceaser salads, maybe some pie. I’d show up there about 8 o’clock and of the twenty-five available tables, maybe three were occupied. There was only one waitress per shift and she was about as old as the folks she served. Twilighters. People too old to spend their money. Drinking their manhattans and gibsons. Eating shepherd’s pie. Big bifocals. Pacemakers. Hair coming out of their ears.

I liked the place because it was quiet and I liked the place because of the bartender. His name was Sean McMannus and he stood about six feet three inches, weighed about two-forty, and had a pair of puppy-dog Irish eyes that narrowed and puckered when he smiled. I was often the only one there at the bar. Sean and I became fast ol’ friends. He checked my fake ID once and that was that. The Jameson flowed. The pilsner flowed. The conversation flowed. I told him my name about four times when I first started showing up. He was never able to remember it, and we eventually reached a point where I knew he’d be far too embarrassed to ever ask me again. So I would make up stories in which people would refer to me by name so that he’d at least be able to utilize it on that particular night.

“So then, Sean…This girl says ‘fuck you, Jack. I’m done. I never wanna’ see you again.’ And I says, ‘but baby, I still owe you a hundred and twenty dollars.”

We laughed some and there were plenty of stories and eventually he was back there drinking as much as I was (which was a lot) and my tab would never appear at the end of the night, which was a shame ‘cause I actually had the money to pay for it. I sat there and closed the place with him night after night. Most nights it’d be just the two of us from about 8:30 to 11 or whenever he wanted to close. He often had to give me a ride home.

He told me about going to the gym three hours a day every day:

“There’re some guys in there, man…I swear ta’ God. Roided-out like you wouldn’t believe. I mean guys that’re five foot five and just like…I dunno…oak trees’re something. I dunno. Today I was on the bike for a while. The bench is good. Y’know. I mean that’s what I’m focusing on. But you gotta’ do the cardio too.”

“Yeah,” I’d drink. “The cardio.”

He talked to me about leaving town and opening a construction business down in Florida:

“It’s…there’s…think about it. There’s a turnover in Florida, y’know what I mean? Lots of people dying all the time. So there needs to be new construction going on constantly.”

“Why can’t the dying people just take the place of the dead?”

“Whaddayou mean?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Whaddayou mean? I mean, ‘cause they’re already dead, that’s why. I dunno, the point is you’re just constantly building nursing homes. Strip-malls. Condos. Assisted living type facilities. There’s just a big need for building things down there. I dunno. You could come down, man. I’d hire ya’ in a heartbeat. I mean, if you’re not doing anything up here.”

“I ain’t much for Florida,” I’d drink. “It’s like someone left the oven on but there’s nothin’ in it.”

“It’s warm though.”

“Yeah.”

We’d drink the Jameson and the Bushmills and the Powers till we were emerald green. He was my only friend for a while there. We were just what we needed to be for each other.

Most times I’d show up to the landscaping job with half a hangover. The sun was always big and accurate that summer. Wasn’t long before my farmer’s tan set in and my hair started to lean red. I met and shook hands with most of the other employees at the company. Ten minutes later I couldn’t pick them out of a lineup. I was nowhere to be found but exactly where I was. I smoked cigarettes in the delivery van. I listened to a lotta’ old Tejano country music. Me and the Mexicans would curse a lot in Spanish. Gawk at young girls in their summer dresses. Laugh at what we couldn’t understand between each other.

One day Julio showed me the tattoo on his chest of Christ hanging broken on the cross. In his broken English he told me he got it in prison. I asked him what he’d gone to prison for. Best I could make out it had something to do with his father. My imagination did backflips.

Whenever we’d arrive at a job site we’d immediately behave ourselves. I’d do all the talking of course, and the Mexicans would get quite as mice. There we were sweating and heaving and plowing on multi-million dollar property. Planting huge floral installations, trimming four hundred yards worth of hedge, unloading the occasional tree. The rich folks would occasionally bark orders or ask questions of the Mexicans who would then defer to me, looks of fear and embarrassment creasing their faces like tooled leather. The whiskey would leak out of me as I assured the homeowners that we’d be careful, gentle. That we were professionals.

The Mexicans were. They worked tirelessly, taking their breaks, but breaking from them when the time was up. They spoke too each other through glances, nods of the head. Their days would die with their arms covered in dirt to the elbows. Slugs of water in the back of the van. Thousand yard stares out the window.

They became themselves to me slowly.

Julio was from Oaxaca. He was the oldest of the three and was in America legally, despite his prison record back home. He was forty years-old. A well-maintained mustache swept across his mouth and it suited him, especially when he smiled. He had a bit of a potbelly that I imagined he was born with. His dark eyes were creased at the corners. A scar traced his chin, just beneath the lower lip. The man had quite obviously seen some shit. He quickly established himself as the leader of the three, yet always did as he was told by yours truly, more than two decades his junior. He spoke a couple times of his three kids back home. He hadn’t seen them in fifteen years. Every two weeks he sent eighty percent of his check back home. He had a dozen brothers and sisters. He stood about five foot, eight inches. He wore an old belt buckle with a picture of a scorpion in the middle. He’d been working since he could walk.

Jose was young and a bit of a wildcard. He was from Juarez, known in part for being the place where Steve McQueen sought an alternative cure for his lung cancer, and also home to the most notorious drug cartel in the world. I never found out his exact age but I would guess it was somewhere in the twenty ballpark. He had a devil’s grin and eyes to match. He was a lanky five foot nine. A face smooth as the air itself. Shitty teeth. A big cheese grated scar down his forearm. After the day was done he’d often get picked up in some sort of Ford hatchback with four other fellas inside. They weren’t going for ice cream, I know that.

Miguel told me he was twenty-four one day when we were in the van. He looked like he was twelve. Julio later told me he was seventeen. He was very quiet even when he spoke. Big bright brown eyes that only winced in the worst sun. He was around five foot five and musta’ weighed a buck and a half. He had a smile sweet as peach cobbler and he seemed almost ashamed to use it. One day, while I was wrestling with a grizzly of a hangover, I called him Mikey. It got a big grin out of him and he put his thumb up. So he was Mikey from then on out. Or Mikey Boy. I wondered where his parents were.

They were my crew. Eight in the morning to four in the afternoon. I saw them and Sean more than anyone else I knew. My hombres and I worked and worked like mutts in the sun and then I’d head over to Kempner’s where I’d drop the day down on the hardwood. Any disconcertion I felt over watching the man serving me get as drunk or drunker than me flew out the window real fast. Sean and I talked and talked about nothing. Even soused on the emerald label, he was still a mystery. I followed suit. Close as we got, the friendship was contained rigorously within the confines of the bar. Talk of women was hypothetical. Talk of sports was forged mostly from our general testosterone and was accompanied by very little fact. We were passing time. Cats lying across windows. Stray quarters on the sidewalk waiting to be pocketed. Tumbleweeds with no wind.

My face took on a little burgundy hue from that open sun. A freckle or two emerged on the nose and forehead. My shoulders and arms swelled some from the labor. My lungs suffered from the cigarette smoke.

One day in the van en route to a large planting job I noticed that Mikey had a bruise underneath his right eye. He finally fessed up to scuffling outside some bar the night before. He said he’d gotten caught in the middle. I believed him. His bicycle had also gotten all fucked-up in the chaos. A blown tire, the body somehow bent. I knew he needed that bicycle to get around. He would catch a ride with some of the other guys occasionally, but mostly he was on that bike. We pulled up in front of a sandwich shop. I went in and got some ice put in a plastic bag. I told Mikey to hold it on that eye.

The next day I rode an old bike of mine to work. It’d been maybe a decade since I’d been on it or any other of its kind. I’d filled the tires with air from a hand-pump. I’d picked the cobwebs from it, shined it up a bit. It was green. A mountain bike. From another life.

My sweat must’ve had a proof as I pedaled in the heat. I was your functional alcoholic. Lonesome, liquored, and alive. When I met up with my crew, I presented the bike to Mikey. He didn’t understand that I was giving it to him.

“Take it,” I said. “It’s for you.”

“Por que?” he asked.

“Porque I want you to have it,” I answered. “I don’t ride it. It’s yours. Tu necesitas una bicicleta, Mikey Boy.”

He didn’t say anything. I didn’t consider it charity and I hoped he didn’t either. People oughta’ give people things. Bicycles. Boots. Rides. Hugs. Sugar. Music.

He didn’t smile and he didn’t look at me. But he did say, “muchas gracias, senor Jack.”

“Your welcome,” I said, rubbing my brow. “Yo soy un borracho.”

“No,” he said. “Borracho?”

“Si. Mucho whiskey y cerveza en mi systema.”

“Okay senor,” he said.

Julio seemed to approve of my actions. Jose seemed envious. Either way there was a new sense of closeness that we all suddenly felt towards one another. Feelings bloomed some. I’d extended myself past the van and the job-to-job life. Cigarettes and smiles and broken languages. Bottled water and potato chips. Miguel would look over at me sometimes, his eyes soft, not saying anything. It wasn’t a crush. It was a highly tenderized gratitude. I was too hungover to feel threatened or embarrassed by it. He was becoming my friend.

I told Sean about giving Mikey the bike. He seemed somewhat disinterested.

“You better tell ‘im to be careful. It’s pretty dangerous riding a bike, y’know, especially if he’s riding it at night.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It is dangerous.”

“I was in there lifting for like three hours today. I added another forty to the bench. Feelin’ it though, man. Big time.” He exhaled and bulged his eyes.

“I guess feelin’ it’s the point,” I said, crunching the booze out of an ice cube. He poured me another. At a corner table a six hundred year-old couple shared a slice of cheesecake with some cherry compote on it. I watched them for a moment wondering if it was called compote or compost. Cherry compost. They ate it and ate it. I thought of them growing up without television and wondering how long they’d been together. (Later in my life a friend and I would discuss television being the great destroyer of marriages. Real work and communication being thrown at the window as thumbs swelled and cable companies thrived.) I watched that old couple and felt sad. Sad for what would and could never be again in the United States of America. My country.

“I’m thinking of going on a diet,” I heard Sean say. “Like that Atkins diet. No carbs, y’know?”

I didn’t know what a carb was. I didn’t know what many things were.

“Well,” I said.

The owners of the company we worked for, my crew and I, were among the richest families in the county if not the state. They were a husband and wife team. Pink skin. Convertibles. Well fed but in perfect health. Eyes the color of Midwestern skies. Maybe they’d worked once. Now hundreds were working for them. They had a son named Sumner. Sumner was my age, taller and fitter, a bashful smile that raised a skirt or two. He had one of those artist’s beards. A sensitive beard. I didn’t hate him for it. I just sort of understood it.

The boys and I were on our way back to the Garland’s shop from a job. Jose was telling a story about some “rubia” he’d met the night before at a dive bar on the outskirts of town. He’d tried to pick her up but’d felt an uneasiness about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Later that night he couldn’t help but feel her six o’ clock shadow start to emerge and the reality of her adam’s apple became unavoidable.

“Ella era un hombre de mierda! Un maricon!”

I didn’t really believe the story. Thought it was mostly to get a reaction out of Miguel. But nonetheless we all laughed. Jose told it was such gusto and genuine shock it was as though we’d all felt the bulge. We lit cigarettes and stared out the window. Half comrades in the whole of the workday.

We pulled into Garland’s and I went into the main office to turn in some paper work and get the location of our next job. One of the managers was there along with Sumner Garland. We’d exchanged glances a few times but’d never really spoken. I walked into the office and the manager, Fred Leddick, introduced me to Sumner. We shook hands. It meant about as much as a pigeon farting in the breeze.

“Here’re the papers on the Johnson job,” I said, handing Fred a signed contract.

“Thanks,” Fred said, taking it from me. “Any trouble.”

“They weren’t even home,” I told him. There was a brief, ugly silence. Then I said, “What’s next?”

“Sumner has a job for you guys. It’s on-site here.”

I was puzzled. I’d never met him and now he had a job for us.

“Let me meet your crew,” Sumner suddenly spoke. “It’s my car. I’ll take you guys to it.”

“What’s that?” I said.

“Come with me,” he said. “Where’s your crew?”

“They’re outside,” I said. He was the son of the owners of the company I worked for. I could’ve been him if a few stars had fallen or a ship had sunk. I was dirty from head to toe. My face had traces of soil on it. My fingernails were black. My clothes were stained beyond bleach or washboard. Yet somehow he regarded me as though his was the more difficult job. I’d heard about the way he asked workers to do things. He spoke as though he’d plowed a billion acres and planted a million seeds.

I led him to my crew and he ordered the four of us to follow him about two hundred yards to an open area on the property. His Mercedes SUV was there. Black. Windows smoked-out. A very expensive automobile and it was the year those things came out. He had one. Miguel had my bike. But that was okay. That life slice. Somebody cooks, somebody eats, somebody cleans up.

Next to the Benz there were three buckets, a hose, soap, sponges, car wax, Armor-All. I was shocked and then I wasn’t. We were a good crew. We belonged “out in the field” working. Planting, gardening, landscaping, delivering. But today we were gonna’ be told to wash the boss’ son’s Mercedes Benz.

“I need you guys to wash the car and then hit it with a coat of wax,” I heard Sumner say. I wondered if he’d be springing for the beer as well.

“I’m not gonna’ do that,” I said immediately.

“What?” he said.

I looked at Julio and told him he didn’t have to wash the car. Julio looked at me, his brow furrowed, his mouth twisted pensively.

“No lave este coche, hermano,” I told him. “No es su trabajo.”

“If you don’t wanna’ wash the car,” Sumner told me, “that’s fine. They might need you in the shop or something. I mean I’m not gonna’ make you wash my car, man,” he said.

I looked at Julio. He was telling Miguel and Jose to get started. Jose fired up the hose and aimed it at the Mercedes. I looked at Miguel. He glanced back at me, shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

“You’re gonna’ make these guys wash your Mercedes, man?” I asked Sumner.

“Whaddayou mean?” he said.

I walked back to the central store where they put me to work unloading plastic gargoyles with “made in China” stamped on the bottom. They were selling the gargoyles for $249.99 each. I did that for a while. Then they had me make three solo deliveries. When I got back from those I went to check on my guys. They weren’t there. But the Benz was. Shining like a prom queen.

Later on I saw Julio. He was loading trees into the back of a box truck. I asked him where the other guys were. He said he didn’t know. He seemed pissed-off and damned if he wasn’t pissed-off at me. I asked him if he was okay. He didn’t really answer me. He just heaved another tree up onto the floorboards of the truck. His clothes were soaked with his own sweat. New lines were being carved into his face by the minute.

He was with three other guys. I’d never seen them. There were so many men there that I hadn’t met.

My shift was over. I looked at Julio.

“Adios, Julio,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

He didn’t answer.

Less than an hour later I was sitting in front of Sean trying to figure it out. We’d started in on a fresh bottle of Bushmills having knocked one apart the night before. There was also a pint of pilsner and baseball on TV. Sean was massaging his arm.

“Oh man,” he said. “Put in like three hours today.”

It was because I had left them. I’d left them while they washed the car. I had a choice and they didn’t. And I chose to let them do it without me. And in an unconscious moment, a moment that’d felt like somewhat of a stand, I separated myself from those guys. My instinct was to say “no” to the rich fucker with the smile. Their lives didn’t afford them that instinct.

Sean poured me another and I drank it. I was “drinking to get drunk”. Like some pamphlet would warn you about. To thin the blood in my veins. To escape my troubles and fears and doubts. This is why I was drinking.

I wanted to apologize to Julio and Jose and Miguel. But it wouldn’t heal what’d already been scarred. I could know all the Spanish in the fuckin’ world. It wouldn’t put me on their side.

I looked up at the TV. It was a nationally televised game. I watched that baseball for a little bit. Once there, for a while back there, I’d played some baseball. Started as an infielder and ended up a catcher. I played and loved playing. Then it stopped or I stopped or however those things go. I was good but to really play you have to be better than good. You have to be touched. Extra-ordinary. I thought about all those young ballplayers. Not drinking. Thinking about the sport. Watching footage. Playing catch. Wind sprints. Batting cages.

I might as well’ve been seventy years-old. Sitting there. Thinking and thinking there. Forever.

The next day I told Fred Leddick I was quitting. I gave no notice and didn’t even work the day. Tucked my tail and walked off like a dealer leaves a table.

I didn’t see the guys on my way out. I saw Miguel’s bike chained up in the parking lot. It was another scorching day. A “scorcher”.

A worker wearing a Garland’s shirt passed by.

“How’s it going?” he said.

“Going alright,” I said.

It was too early for Kempner’s to be open but I went by there anyway. The door was locked. It opened for lunch at noon and it was only nine o’clock. I got in my car and rode around for a while.

I’d have to find another job. Maybe I’d try painting houses or something. Maybe some construction. I knew some rudimentary woodworking. I’d washed dishes one summer. That was something I didn’t wanna’ get into again. No man wants hands that soft.

I couldn’t help but feel a great sadness. It lumped my throat and ached my head. I turned on the air conditioning and felt sick and guilty for doing it. I pulled into a Texaco and parked beside a pump.

Inside the store I told the clerk “Twenty on number four.”

“Twenty on four? No problem.”

He punched a few buttons on a computer.

“You’re not hiring by any chance are you?” I asked.

“Huh?” he said.

I threw the nozzle in the tank and squeezed. The numbers on the pump slid down till they stopped at $20. I looked around and saw a few people walking along. Businesses opening. A Chevy Blazer was pulling out of the McDonald’s drive-thru.

I had the sudden thought of going to the local shelter and adopting a dog. An old dog. One that was already established. Maybe a little tired. Then I realized I’d need some real money to take on a dog. I’d at least need a job. I’d have to get another job and then maybe I could adopt a dog.

I looked up at the sky and it felt like it would be morning forever.

And I tried and tried but I never really made it out of that town.

NYC, NY (5/27/09)