Work

Clint fanned his log book in case they were operating the weigh station between Smyrna and Middletown. On his internal clock, it was about three in the afternoon, but he thought of his wife, Jane, waking up prematurely to the paid programming on one of the local stations. It was four in the morning and he was almost finished with the run he was training Eric to take over in a week or so. The two drivers—the most senior and junior overnight men for Quaker City Motor Parts—would tell you they weren’t cut out for a day job. They shared a certain toughness.
Eric sat beside him and thumbed a cigarette out the narrow crack in the window just beside the rear view. Eric was twenty eight, fresh out of the Air Force and his mustang was his only strong tie. As long as he had been carpooling with Clint, the gas bill had been under control, but his constant worries about burning through another clutch had finally been realized on his way to work that night. This was the third he had torched, and he couldn’t tell whether it was the car or him.
With a daughter married and living next door and one son about to finish college, Clint had offered a few Saturdays to help restore the car’s internal bruises. He would have been free the morning after their run, but his son, Everett, was coming home for the weekend—a visit that had been planned and aborted for a couple of weeks now. Clint heard most, if not all of the news about his son through his wife, and this time Jane had told him she had asked Everett to come home just to visit—it had been a while.
Eric lounged back into his seat and stuck one foot out. “So we gonna break her down in the morning and fix that bitch…it might just be the slave cylinder, you know?” He was looking ahead toward the next exit.
Clint had let his own cigarette burn down a little further than he should have and he paused a few seconds before responding. “Everett’s coming down in the morning and I’m not sure what Jane has planned. Probably not.”
The two rode in silence to the next stop, Eric turning the CB on a few times to check for speed traps. Clint had been taunting Eric to think of a handle for a while, leveraging the privilege until Eric settled on a good one. Clint was “the governor,” a name he had had since Bill Clinton had made his first bid for the presidency. He was proud of the distinctive recognition it held among the mid-Atlantic short-range delivery men who mostly went by meaningless handles like “the lone ranger.”
At forty two, Clint didn’t talk much. In fact, he had had a quiet life; he hadn’t said his first word until he was four years old, having spent his first years in a mourning house. His father had died unexpectedly before he turned a year old and no one said much during his that time. He chafed slightly under the label of the quiet type, mostly because he didn’t think that much needed to be said, or at least not as much as most people dragged on about. If you knew him well, you didn’t have to look past his attitude toward driving to figure this out about him.
He had rules that he thought everyone knew and he took it slow and defensive as long as other drivers didn’t break these rules. If you cruised in the left hand lane he would ride you close until you got out of his way. The road, just like everything else, had obvious norms that everyone should be able to intuit. As long as everyone saw it as he did—the normal, obvious way of seeing it—nothing needed to be said.
The fifty-foot straight truck hauling auto parts rounded the skinny entrance to the dim strip-mall parking lot and headed around the side to the loading dock. Eric mentioned that the Newark store usually had the heaviest load and that after that stop it was a coast back to the warehouse.
Clint nodded and lumbered down over the fuel tank. It was hard on his knees getting out of the truck, but he liked to think the up and down kept him fit.
“Two pallets of batteries? Shouldn’t there be some alternators?” Eric joked as he resigned himself to his work gloves.
“Nah, these shits just wait until they’re down to their last couple before they send in an order.” Clint said as he stepped off of the creaking lift. “This lift’s been gettin’ slower and slower for a couple weeks now…might need Mills to take a look at it.” Clint added, standing relaxed and lingering near where the lift met the tailgate.
Eric sized up the failing hydraulic pad and brushed it off because they were on their last stop. The first pallet was the heavier of the two and they situated it carefully before lowering the lift. Clint could immediately tell that it was straining a little more than normal, but there wasn’t any way around it. About halfway to the ground, the hydraulics gave out and the pad tilted the pallet toward the store, the whole of it crashing down on the reinforced chambers that housed the hydraulic arms. The arms were jammed and immovable and the lift pad was stuck angled against the ground. Mills would have to make a late night call.
As they went back to the cab to call it in and have another cigarette, Eric got a call from his girlfriend, Ada. Her ‘81 Honda wouldn’t start and she had work in an hour.
“Fuckin’ carburetor. There isn’t a worn part on the rest of the can, but that model blows a carburetor every three years.” Eric was already in the cab and all he could do was shake his head after a long drag.
Clint was looking in the rear view at the busted lift, trying to imagine a way to disconnect it. He heard Eric, but followed his own thinking about the lift before responding. “Mills’ll be here in about an hour, but maybe Walter or Jonesy just finished up their run.”
No one was picking up their cell phone, but they had a chance with the CB. As he checked through the frequencies, Clint couldn’t help thinking about the times he had rescued Everett’s mistreated pickup. Both times the truck had failed, his son had been away at a baseball tournament in New Jersey—the state every truck driver on the East coast hated the most. He knew Everett tried to pay attention when he analyzed the suspicious sounds and reactions of the fading S-10, but the boy just didn’t care enough. Everett had been gifted since he was young, but he took after his mother; literature clicked for him and he hadn’t even asked for his first car, but accepted it when it became a necessity.
A radio check finally came from a familiar voice and the governor assured Jonesy that he had an audience. The warehouse in Middletown was only twenty minutes away and they would be on their way to Magnolia within the hour.
Eric didn’t seem concerned as he switched the radio from the light rock station that had somehow found its way onto their radio. He still sensed there might be some time to work on the mustang in the morning. “What if we just checked her out in the morning? Just have a listen?”
Clint was used to going without sleep on the weekends (it was tough not sticking to his own time) so he thought about it. “We’ll see. Maybe there’s something we can do.” He had taken to Eric because he caught the few jokes he threw out. They both mostly poked at the sloppy warehouse employees that loaded their truck—a thread common among the night workers who understood that night work took a particular fiber. After all, they were the ones that actually saw the deal through.
About when they expected, Jonesy’s grumbling Ford pulled around the corner and they left the truck locked and secure. Still, no one said very much, and Clint was thinking about Everett. At twenty one, his son was still floating without a job for his first year out of school. Although he maintained a humble charm, he tended to over-explain and, even after four years of college, Clint was sure Everett didn’t feel comfortable with himself. He had the most dedicated and thorough understanding of his faults, but he was either talented or lazy enough to appear carefree and content.
After four cigarettes and some catch up about their contacts at Petro, they pulled into the warehouse parking lot. Fortunately, Eric and Clint had driven separately and Eric was glad to get out of Jonesy’s freezing ’76 and into Clint’s newer model with a functioning heater. Clint knew Eric needed either the Honda or the mustang fixed before Monday and Eric didn’t have the money or the constitution to leave it with a mechanic. Also, he thought there was a good chance his wife might not have anything specific planned for the morning, so he told Eric they could get to work for a few hours once the mustang made the trailer ride downstate.
After they took Ada to work, the two headed for the Clint’s house with Eric’s Air Force buddy behind them pulling the trailer. The house sat alone at the midpoint of one of those isolated roads only a few people travel either for one of a handful of reasons or if they’re lost. Carved out of a large field that was itself whittled irregularly out of the surrounding forests, it stuck out between fields of bent and harvested soy bean stalks. Eric had only been to there a few times, but the pattern of bumps and dips seemed familiar.
Clint’s base model Ford eased up next to the shop behind the one story rancher and the two drivers got out with more spring than usual. They took a few minutes unloading and chatting with Eric’s friend Brian before they both went in the house for coffee.
“Does it always smell like pie? You got it rough, man.” Eric said as he poured the instant mix into the two microwaveable mugs.
Clint chuckled and headed toward his bedroom down the narrow hallway that extended from the dining room and kitchen area. He had noticed the living room light on to the right of the kitchen and assumed Jane had not been able to fall back asleep. Instead, Everett’s sprawled and brawny figure filled the arm chair next to a muted, high-definition sports highlight show. A little weary, Clint asked “you workin’?”
“Yeah, got home late. I’m up a little.” Everett responded as he looked up toward his dad for a second and then panned back toward the television. Everett had latched onto online poker as a source of income and pride, but resented how trendy it had become.
Clint continued down the hallway. “We’re gonna work on Eric’s mustang if your interested” he said just before leaving Everett’s sight. Clint had never wanted to interfere with Everett and so his questions always came out as half-hearted invitations. Ever since the Erector set had been abandoned and unopened under Everett’s bed, Clint had known how their relationship would go.
Everett didn’t respond because he knew that Clint knew. Clint was not good at explaining things and Everett had always been in the way when it came to cars. If he offered an excuse his dad might nod or he might not.
Clint returned from the bedroom before Eric had a chance to speak to Everett. Walking slowly past the living room without turning or addressing his son, Clint continued on out the back door adding “we’ll be in the barn.”
Everett heard the two hack mechanics bantering as they walked toward the barn. He had accepted a while before that he and his father grew up differently and cared about different things. His dad had quit high school and made a wage his whole life, but that was a different time and Clint’s parents didn’t expect him to go to college. When it came to machines, his dad had a quiet, patient mind that was always two steps ahead. The moments that stuck with Everett even above any minor emotional breakthroughs they had had were the countless cigarettes he had watched burn down a little quicker toward his father’s lips as they sat upright facing the underside of a car. He had focus and he could make things work. Clint wouldn’t bother to tell you that though, and Everett wasn’t even sure if Clint had ever bothered to think of himself in that way.
Everett decided his cards had gone cold and that he should check on the mustang. It wasn’t something he would normally risk—being cornered into observation by his moderate interest and pride—but he was bored. In the shop, they were almost done situating the jacks and chalking the tires and they had a sluggish determination, like they could work all day at that pace.
Clint was a little confused, but he figured Everett had a message. When his son put his hands in his pockets and leaned over to look under the car, he asked him for the air hose. Everett complied and Clint began loosening the lug nuts on the front right wheel.
They were all tired and they simply let the empty cold fill the shop. They worked in silence for a few minutes, Eric organizing the tools and Everett looking for the grease gun.
Everett found the grease gun and turned back to the car. His father had begun to take the wheel off, but had stopped for some reason. He sat back in the worn shop chair and stared at Everett. He held a soft stare right into Everett’s eyes and eventually his son found the words they were both looking for. “We shouldn’t be long. I bet it’s just a little worn.”