THE FIRST DAY . . .
(Friday, June 12, just before the dinner
shift)
MACK:
“Bad news,” Vic
says.
“There’s another
kind?”
“I lost the
restaurant.”
“Another tough night
at the online poker table?”
“Catastrophic.” The
old man saddles a flipped milk crate and clobbers garlic cloves
with his hand. Says it makes him feel one with the earth, except
there’s not a lot of earth up here in the city. Baked concrete,
now, that we got. Back in Texas, there you had land. “I’m bringing
you and Tony over to my other place,” Vic says. “Didn’t I send you
there once, to fill in for Freddy maybe, Valentine’s
Day?”
“No sir.” I only
started working here three months ago.
“It isn’t far from
here. You’ll still be able to walk to work. You’ll like it there.
Nice family atmosphere. Tony’s mom works there. His sister
too.”
“He told me.” He also
said his sister would like me, but I don’t think so. I’m no good at
looking folks in the eye. I guess I’m taller than average, but I
grew up small, didn’t hit my growth spurt till later. I don’t know.
I steer clear of people as much as I can. Vic and Tony. They’re the
only folks I feel a little comfortable with. I don’t mind it so
much, being alone. You can’t do anything about it. You’ve got to
keep going. What else are you going to do? “What’re you gonna do
about the name of the other restaurant, Mister Vic?” He has Vic’s
and Vic’s Too—or he did until he lost Vic’s.
“It’ll still be Vic’s
Too,” he says. “Brand recognition. Very important.”
“I see.” No, I don’t.
How do you have a Too when the first one is gone? “My spot at the
new place, dishwashing?”
“Freddy keeps smoking
pot on the job, you’re in,” Vic says. “Till then, you’re on
delivery. You look disappointed.”
“I like to clean
stuff.”
“I know,” Vic says.
“You’re very good at it. The grease on those plates. You’re
uncompromising.”
“Thought you just
said I was good.”
“I suspect Freddy
won’t last,” Vic says. “I gave him half a dozen chances to
straighten up, and he left me chapfallen every time. Six or seven
more times, I’ll have to let him go.”
“I hear you. Yeah.
I’m betting chapfallen means nothing
near what I think it means.”
“Are you seeing a
picture of a fancy British guy falling off a horse?”
“I am.”
“Yeah,” Vic says,
“then you would be wrong. It means he douched me.” Vic looks about
as smart as a thrown stone, but he’s the king of the crosswords.
“Very potent word, chapfallen .
Remember it.” Vic says potent a lot
too.
“Why would I use
chapfallen when I can say douched instead?”
“Because you might
not want to say douched in front of a
woman.”
“I do see your
point.”
“You up for some
Wiffle ball?” the old man says.
“I got a bunch more
prep work to do.”
“Ey, look at
me.”
“Yessir?” I look him
in the eye, but a second later I’m back to looking at my sneaker
laces. One’s busted, but I have string in my pocket.
“You’re fifteen, not
fifty,” Vic says. “I don’t tell somebody to do something unless I’m
sure I’m right about it. I know what I know. Right here, right now,
for you, this is the right thing, this Wiffle ball. You need to do
this.”
“I need to do Wiffle
ball?”
He studies the ball
in his hand. “Kid, no matter how much money you make, you’ll spend
more than you have. You miss a chance at fun, you never get it
back. Now go on out and tell Tony I said knock it off with the
clams. You work too hard, the two of you.” Vic grabs the Wiffle bat
from where we keep it with the long breads and chucks it to me. “I
gotta call this guy, then I’ll be out.”
Out back, Tony’s
shucking cherrystones. It’s hot for early June, and I’m sweating,
but Tony doesn’t sweat. He’s the coolest dude, eighteen but with
old-man wisdom. I can’t look him in the eye either.
The restaurant backs
up onto an old house on the one side. The neighbor’s dog hops the
fence to hang with us. Dog jumps all over Tony. Tony’s laughing and
telling the dog all nice to sit, but the dog has Tony on his pay no
mind list.
I make my hand a claw
and poke the dog’s flank, like his mom would do. Dog spins and
looks at me. I have no problem looking him in the eye while real
quiet I grunt “Wait.” Dog rolls belly up for me to scratch him. His
tail beats dust from the concrete.
“I’m telling you,
Mack, you gotta do it.” Tony is always after me to start my own dog
training business. “You’d make serious coin.”
“I don’t have the
money for the school.”
“You don’t need the
school,” Tony says.
“You need the license
from the school, or people don’t think you’re any
good.”
Tony claps my back to
make me look him in the eye. “How much is it?”
“The school? Got no
idea.” I got the exact idea.
“What, like four or
five grand?”
“Four. How’d you
know?”
“Four is nothing,” he
says. “We’ll put it on my credit card.”
“Nah, I don’t like
owing folks. What if I can’t pay you back?”
“So?” he
says.
That right there is
Tony in a minute. He’s the line cook, and he doesn’t make a whole
bunch more than me. I tell him he was right in the first place, the
school’s a waste of money, but now he won’t let up on he wants me
to go to the school.
My mother showed me
the way of dogs. She was from hill country, a migrant picker’s
daughter. Knew all kinds of towns and the dogs who ran their
streets. She could rehabilitate some tough dogs, tell you what. We
were out shopping for milk and such once. Mom eyed a dog, said,
“Mack, see that straggly mutt gnashing his teeth at me? I’m-a have
him rolling over for a belly scratch before you can say boo.” I
said that was a good name for the dog, Boo. She laughed. She had
that dog eating apple bits from her hand. That’s pretty much my
favorite thing I remember about my mom. The old man forever
complained at her, like “Get that dog out the house,” and “That is
a stupid opinion,” and “Why can’t you
ever be satisfied? You think you gonna
get better than motel cleaning work? You? ” Face like he sucked a bag of
lemons.
I woke up a rainy
morning some years back to find him reading the note. My mother was
watching an old movie a few nights before and imagined herself in
it. It came to her that God called her to be an actress, and she
had to go north to New York. Me and my father followed her there,
but we never did find her. We tried Philly too, then Los Angeles.
To ditch the old man she changed her name to Miranda something, and
I would have done the exact same thing.
My father couldn’t
find steady work, so we shuffled back to Texas a few times before
we struck out north again. We been here in the city almost four
years now, and I don’t think we’re going anywhere, now that the old
man has a regular job.
I saw her once on a
commercial, Mom. One of them pills that make you crap. Late night.
She was in the background. The old man pointed her out before he
smashed the TV with a jug wine bottle.
Vic limps out back
with his hands up for me to throw him the ball. He pitches pretty
good, but the Tone has a world-class arm on him. He could strike me
out easy, but he lays it right in there so I can crack it. We put
electric tape over the ball to make it go far. The other side of
the restaurant butts up on a tenement alley. The echoes are cool
when the bat gets a good hold of the ball.
Vic huffs and puffs
from chasing down the ball, and him and Tony are laughing because
the dog won’t leave my side even when I’m batting.
The Tone wanted me to
pair up with him for this big brother after-school thing, but in
order to do an after-school, you have
to go to school, and to hell with that.
Everybody calling you faggot and snapping at your ears? And even
after you get tall, they still push the books out from under your
arm and put pennies in your milk when you aren’t looking, to choke
you. Smacking the back of your head because you missed a belt loop,
or telling you your fly is down when it’s fine? In the classes, I
couldn’t stay awake. Making me look at all those boring books.
Reading is just lame, I don’t care what folks say. I’m a working
man, saving up to get a little land somewhere, set it up good for
me and a pack of pit bulls and maybe a nice lady, if one gets
retarded all of a sudden and starts to like me even though I could
never look her in the eye. I don’t mean to say anything about
retards. I like retards a ton—I’m no racist.
It’s not like I never
been with a girl before, but she didn’t like me. She was sixteen or
something. A few months back, I had a job delivering store
circulars to the tenements. I saw her twice or so in the halls, and
she never spent a look on me. But this one day, she does a double
take and says, “Hot cocoa?” And I said, “What?” And she rolled her
eyes and said real slow, like I was a moron, “Do, you, want, some,
hot cocoa?” The slush kept getting in
through the rip in my sneaker, so I was like, “Yeah, cocoa’d be
real nice, thank you.” We went into her apartment and next thing
you know she was pulling me into her room and pulling down my pants
and we smacked it up real quick. She hurried me out right after,
said her folks were coming home soon, and I didn’t get any hot
cocoa either. I brought her daisies the next day and she told me to
git. I found out she was using me for practice, because she liked
this older dude, and apparently he was real experienced, and he
didn’t want the responsibility of making a girl not a virgin
anymore. So I don’t know if there’s a girl out there for me, but
you got to have hope. Doesn’t cost you anything, hope. At least
nothing I can see.
Word gets out Vic
lost the restaurant to this online poker queen who calls herself
Hammerhead, and Vic’s selling the food cheap to clean everything
out before he has to turn over the keys to the shark. I like it
busy. I’m scrubbing pots and driving plates through the washer,
making sure they’re perfect. The bustle keeps me from hearing the
hissing. It’s not really hissing, this noise inside my head, but
that’s what I call it. Like when you roll the radio to static and
dial up the volume? Like that. It reminds me of stuff I can’t let
myself think about anymore. I have to move on. Anyways, staying
busy blocks it out, most times. I don’t know. Just have to stay
busy, I guess.
Come end of shift,
Vic pays me cash. I missed the last few check-ins with my parole
officer, and they scan the tax databases for AWOL parolees. Vic
knows I’ve got a record. Burglary when my old man was out of town
for a few weeks, looking for work, and I was damn near starving. I
had this house staked out, knew when the folks were at work. A
neighbor caught me sneaking out with three frozen pizzas and a
pocket’s worth of jewelry, which ended up being fake. Then this
other time these kids got at me, shoved me into a trash can and
rolled me down the school steps, which is another reason you
shouldn’t go to school. The radio static got real loud on that one.
To stop it I got back at one of them boys with my knife. What else
can you do? And anyways, he wasn’t hurt that bad. Crying over a few
stitches in front of that judge. Ten stitches in your thigh? I got
more sliding into a gravelly third base once. Man up. You don’t
want to get cut, don’t say bad stuff about my mother when you’re
rolling me down the school steps.
Me and the Tone leave
work together. Like every girl we pass on the main street knows
him. Tony says to one of them, “How’d your father make out with the
operation, Jessica babe?” And I swear he remembers all their
sisters’ and uncles’ names and their families’ doings and “How’s
Marisol’s baby? She’s got to be two by now, right?” And don’t you
know the baby just turned two? Tony introduces me, and I can’t look
at them. I kind of mumble hey and keep my head down. Tony says we
have to go, and the girls are all like “Aw, Tony, hang out.
Please? ”
We get to Tony’s
street, and he says, “Hang a left, come on up my way.”
“I better get on
home,” I say.
“I’m just down the
block there. I want you to drop a hi on my sister.”
I get all red and I’m
like “Nah.”
“You’re gonna be
working together anyway now at the Too. She’s cool, I
swear.”
“Nah,
man.”
“C’mon in and say hi
to my mother,” Tony says. “She’s always baking something and she’ll
let you sip a half a cup of beer.”
“Baking in
summer?”
“I
know.”
“I’m up early
tomorrow.” My other job is I walk dogs.
“Okay, look, I’ll
grab us a pair of Sprites, and we’ll sip ’em by the curb. C’mon,
it’s a nice night. Mack, I’m not gonna bring out my sister,
okay?”
I force myself to
trust him and grab some curb where the street slopes down by the
sewer. Crazy stars tonight. Tony’s up and down the block in a
minute with the coldest Sprites. We sip with no need for words
passing between us, and I’m real glad I answered that sign in Vic’s
window saying he was looking for a dishwasher that rainy day last
March. I’ll miss Tony maybe more than anybody I ever met. “Yo,
Tony, man, the army, you make up your mind?”
Tony smiles. He’s
checking the sky. “See that slow mover way up there, the brightest
one? It’s a satellite.”
“Nah,
serious?”
“That thing just
might still be sailing long after we’re all gone.”
“Yo, I hope you don’t
do it, man.”
“Mack, if I go, I
need a favor.”
“You got it, man.
Anything.” I almost look him in the eye.
“Céce.”
“Huh?”
“My sister. I need
you to look out for her.”
“What, like, keep the
dudes away?”
“No, she can handle
herself,” he says. “It’s just that she’s . . .”
“Yeah?”
“You’ll
see.”
“Tony, man, stay,
man. You don’t have to go over there.” He takes in the sky and then
the neighborhood, which is kind of run-down but quiet with these
little old one-family houses. He gets a little sad-looking, but he
real quick smiles that away and punches my arm soft and heads up
the block.