as I'm going to my parents for a week and might actually do some work down there. It's rough, I know.
My
first day out I drove the freeway in darkness well into the suburb-end of Broad
street. I waited in a dirt lot adjacent to an extended stay hotel, my truck
alone other than for a couple tractor trailers.
I walked around in the morning, wearing my backpack and kicking rocks, too
nervous and impatient to sit in the truck. Finally a crew-cab Chevy raced
around the corner of the hotel and dove into the gravel, travelling much too
fast. It was dented to the point of where I was not sure if it was exactly safe
to drive. The window rolled down to
reveal the driver as possibly the fattest man I’d ever encountered. Even as dark as it was, I could tell the cab
was filled to capacity with men who had only recently gotten very quiet. The driver said, “Hey, you Clay?” I said
yeah, he said “I’m uh…Clayton.” And chuckled. He had a baseball hat and a long
greasy pony tail. “Throw your gear in the back and jump in.”
Everybody
in the cab was cheerful enough and we roared out Patterson into the county,
pulled into a stripmall parking lot out front of a closed down Greek
restaurant. I’d been by the place a hundred times. The lot was next to a
wetland surrounding a river as Patterson crossed it. The sun was finally up and
the crew unloaded and commenced to unload chainsaws from the bed of the Chevy.
I stood around looking for something to do. Clayton rolled up on me, almost
waddling really.
“Just
hang out for a second till Redbag shows up, we gotta piss test you before you
can drive. Plus we gotta wait for fuckin’ Jose’ and them to show up with the
Puddle-jumpers anyway.”
“What’s
a puddlejumper?” I asked.
“You
shitting me?” he laughed “It’s the god damn truck you’re gonna be driving.”
“Oh.
Far-fucking out.”
Clayton’s
face was huge and round like everything else about him was huge and round but
the thing about his eyes, even as squinted by his cheeks as they were, is that
there was no meanness to them. He had the kindest, bluest eyes of any fat
straw-boss I’d ever met. It took me a
couple weeks before I figured out why he was constantly having to pull his
pants up. It was the complete lack of waist for them to hang onto.
The
crew bitched about the swamp for a minute and put on pairs of shredded safety
chaps that had used to be orange but with years of grease and filth had assumed
the color of rust. George the metal kid
had one saw taken apart and was threading a chain back onto the bar. Everybody
gassed up, made sure the motors fired, after a minute they all walked off in
the direction of the overpass. Redbag
pulled up in his clean white truck, got out and shook my hand. He produced a little cup and asked me to
oblige him with a urine sample. I went
off toward a dumpster just behind the Greek place. Halfway there the lower part of my guts
informed me no dumpster would cut it, so I kept headed into the woods, found a
trash filled ditch and some broad oak leaves and dropping my pants, squatted
there, hoping no Greeks would come out the back door.
“What
fucking took you so long?” asked Redbag when I got back.
“Sorry,
got excited, had to poop.” I handed him
the cup.
“Oh god
almighty I hope you didn’t put that in there.” He added some chemicals to it
shook it gingerly with two fingers, changed hands and held the container up to
the sunlight. I guess it had leaked as he wiped his other hand on his
jeans. He glanced over said, “Well
you’re good to go.” And rearing back, flung my perfect urine sample into the
swamp. It was framed for a second by a
perfectly clear blue sky shot through with streaks of clouds. I was sad to see
it go. He got back into his truck and
rolled the window down. He asked next to see my license. I brought it out,
showed it to him.
“Just
so you know, I’ve only had my CDL a couple of months. I got a spotless record
though.”
“That’s
fine, we’ll work with you. Oh yeah, do you have your health card?”
“I’m
not sure what that is.”
He
looked surprised. “It’s required for you to be driving any kind of commercial
vehicle. We can both get into big-time trouble with that. If you get pulled
they can fine us ten grand. The City didn’t make you get one?”
“I
never even heard of it before today.” I said, we looked at each other for a
second, “I’ll get it taken care of right away. Whatever it takes.”
“Okay.”
And he was gone, leaving me with Clayton. I said Shit. Clayton told me don’t
worry, we’ll get you straight. Suddenly the trucks where there.
They
were called Puddle-jumpers because they were designed to go off road. You could
hear them coming a mile away due to the giant tires. One was an International
like the one I was on back at the City. The other was a Ford but a F650. They
were both stripped to the frame with nothing but a platform on the back for the
lift. They were red and were clean and they roared as they idled there in the
parking lot, obliterating everything else.
Nobody
told me the truck was stick.
