Chapter Four
The next night Juan and Willy battled each other in the rear parking lot of Bess Tacos when taking out the garbage. Afterwards, they were sitting in the same booth at the back of the restaurant when Frank the Fart found them again and brought his plate of rolled-up tacos and sat right down without pretending to ask permission.
“What you boys done before you washed dishes here in the kitchen? If you don’t mind me asking,” asked Frank as he sat.
“Shit,” said Juan under his breath to Willy.
“Used to be car detailers at a dealership,” Willy said sullenly.
“Together?”
“Yeah.”
Frank perked up. “That’s nice. Work buddies. I had me a work buddy a long time ago. No, wait, that were my wife. What happened to that job?”
“We screwed up,” said Juan.
“Screwed up what?” asked Frank.
“We were fighting with air hoses and that wasn’t company policy.”
“Had you always been detailers?”
“We were car handlers before that,” said Juan.
“What happened?”
“We got fired from a different dealership,” said Willy.
“We were blocking a drive with an Isuzu Trooper,” Juan said.
“Did you crash it? Crash it into a valuable wall or somin?” asked Frank.
“No, we left the keys in the ignition and the engine running,” said Juan.
“What? You did what?”
“Left it running all night,” said Juan. “While we was checking the doors of a bunch of other cars, and all the different stuff we was supposed to do at closing, we forgot the car was running there blocking the drive and we both went home.”
“The Trooper sat there till the morning,” Willy added.
“Like a trooper, you could say. Te he,” laughed Frank.
Juan and Willy regarded that old man with real hatred.
“So who found it?” asked Frank.
“A cleaner came in the next morning and found it. He told the head of sales and he came out and found the Trooper still running on the drive,” said Willy.
“Shucks, tat were bad luck. It would have been better if it twoulda been stolen,” said Frank.
“We never got that job in the wash rack there or the detail there which was good money,” Willy said, sighing.
“You wouldn’t have got it anywho, Wilhelmo, the goddamn manager of used cars wanted his nephew to start there,” said Juan.
“Necrophilism, it’s everywhere,” cried the old coot. “Sign of the Pock-o-lisp. Third one. No, I wrong, fourth one.”
“I coulda used the tips from that job,” Willy said.
“Wash rack or detail were cream puff jobs, for sure,” Juan agreed, “but we weren’t nobody’s nephew.”
“Wages low?”
“Huh?” asked Juan.
“Where you worked next. Or did you come straight here?”
“No. We both worked in a cafeteria before we got the other detailing job.”
“You don’t say? Lunch ladies?”
“Cafeteria workers,” said Juan and Willy simultaneously. Every fuckin’ body was always teasing them when they found out they had worked in a school cafeteria. They were always calling them fuckin’ lunch ladies.
“That’s tough,” said Frank. “What school?”
“Hobson Elementary.”
“Oh, that were tough, I bet.”
“Darn near tore my shoulder in two,” Willy said.
“Damn!” said Old Frank. “How did that happen? Did a little kid do it?”
“No. How could a little kid do that?” said Juan with anger at the old man’s stupidity.
“They pretty vicious.”
“We worked for this big old cafeteria manager.”
“Don’t say. Were she terrible? Did she tear your shoulder?”
“She barely moved from her chair where she was the cashier and hundreds of chins ran down the front of her,” Willy explained.
“Uh, that don’t sound appetizing.”
“It was pretty easy to take a little food home, though,” Willy explained, “cause she was lenient about that and let us take home trays of baked chicken without batting an eye until I got hurt because she was taking food home too and I could have turned her in to the school district and she would have lost her job. One day she looked up from counting the lunch money and said, ‘Willy, I saw you dump a quarter down the garbage disposal right now with an enchilada which was careless. It was on that last tray you sprayed. You better reach in there and get it for me.’”
“She were cheap,” said Frank.
“You said it. I always gave her the kids’ quarters (that was their change from lunch which they forgot) because I knew she would see money sitting on the trays because no money ever escaped her. But I had missed that one quarter and she had seen it fall into the garbage disposal. She pretended she was afraid of breaking school property (the garbage disposal) which could come back on her during evaluations and she was already getting razzed by other managers and had been written up because she dumped mashed potatoes down a pipe and sealed it closed and they had to call out expensive plumbers to unstick it, so a quarter in the disposal could grind up the gears. That mashed potato thing happened before I was hired so she couldn’t blame me or she would have. I did as she said and looked in with all the ground up bits of enchilada and lettuce here and there but I ain’t saw nothing like a quarter. ‘It’s gone,’ I said.”
“Then what’d she do?” asked Frank.
“‘Look better,’” she ordered and went back to counting the money in the register. She had to have the count done before the man came with warehouse deliveries, because he always took the money bag and paperwork and she would get written up by her manager if it weren’t ready in time.”
“Managers sure love to write you up,” said Frank, “yeah.”
“I looked some more and, holy mierda, I saw it. I put my hand down but when I leaned over my left hip pressed a little teeny brass button that they used to switch on the disposal and I ground up the tips of two fingers and the side of this hand pretty good, but it was the wrenching my shoulder took when I pulled my hand back fast that has lasted all these years.”
“Dang!” exclaimed Frank.
“‘My hand!’ I screamed when the blades were cutting the side of my fist. ‘My hand! My hand!’ ‘Go ahead and take your hand outta there,’ said the kitchen manager as calm and unconcerned as could be, like I had put his hand into a prize box at a party and I was taking more than my share.”
“Of course, he went to the district approved urgent care place,” said Juan, helping out with the story, “and got bandaged up and took some days off with pay. The doctor and nurse asked him all sorts of dumb-ass questions about the accident while they bandaged him up, and he answered them honestly thinking nothing of their interest ‘cept that they cared about him the way another human would after they were fuckin’ injured. But they was secretly taking notes of everything he said. After he went back to work, the school district sent this risk management team to talk to him and they told him by what he had said to the nurse and doctor that his accident was due to what they called blind stupidity on his part, though in fact it was that manager who had told him to do that, ordered him, to fish around in the disposal for that goddamn quarter.”
“So you got no money from it?” asked Frank, turning back to Willy.
“Not a dime,” Willy said.
“There ain’t no justice in the Old Pueblo,” said Frank.
“I hafta agree with that,” said Juan.
And Juan had something there, for Willy always thought when people talked about all those freeloaders taking advantage of workers’ comp they actually don’t know about people like him who had shoulders messed up and got nothing. The number who get nothing and are hurt are about equal to the number who have nothing wrong with them and get loads of money. The people who are getting injured are so scared to do anything or don’
t realize how hurt they really are until too late. Especially when things creep up on you like the way you stand when you spray dishes that makes your feet and ankles hurt so bad you can not sleep at night or walk down the steps of the bus the next morning on the way to work. Juan and Willy knew that manager of theirs used to leave knives in the soapy sink and that is really a no-no in a kitchen and Juan and Willy saw people get cut. But the injured never filed workers’ comp or even saw a doctor. ‘Please no knives,’ was what one cafeteria lady who came in there as a substitute wrote out on a note and taped up over the hot and soapy sink, which is one of the three sinks you have to have in a kitchen, but the manager went by and saw it and she tore it down, ripped it up, and threw it in the trashcan. She just giggled while she was doing that. She was still giggling in her office when Willy signed out on her computer. That substitute cafeteria worker and Willy were disgusted, but they were too weak and timid to do anything about it.
“Juanie, ” Willy said then, “do you remember at the dealership how we said that a manager could come in drunk, park a new car, and stagger around, even smash into a telephone pole with a brand new car and no one would say anything except ‘Watch out for that pole.’ He would be kept on regardless of what he did that cost the company money and by that I mean profit.”
“No, ese, no,” Juan disagreed and he set his beer down on the table firmly, “now I hafta object. You ain’t telling it right. A manager who smashes a car into a telephone pole will actually get a promotion, Wilhelmo. You know that as well as I do. He will get a promotion. And, mierda, they will write nice things about him on his annual evaluation such as ‘Shows drive and initiative’ and ‘Driving the company to new, higher profits every day.’”
“Heh, heh,” laughed Frank, finishing up his plate of rolled-up tacos. “You guys seen it the same ways I do.”
“Sure, that’s true enough,” Willy said, not in a mood for more arguments, because he wanted to work Juan around to the topic of the mine again. Just telling the old geezer about what they had been through in the last few years, about the injuries and insults they had endured, made him ready to try something new. The Santa Claus Mine might have failed, but maybe another mine would succeed. Maybe this mine of the padre was just the ticket out of Poorville that they needed.
“It ain’t just true, you can bet on it,” said Juan.
“Mining is the best bet for you boys. You bound to have luck cuz you ain’t had no luck before. I wish I could go looking for that Keystroke Mine with you. It’s a mighta fine mine. But I’d rather fine my older brother before I die,” explained Frank.
Just then, Spigot Soza who was a regular and who was always hanging out when it was closing at Bess Tacos came staggering along the counter to their booth. There were big gaps in his T-shirt where battery acid had eaten away the fabric, and you could see his brown skin underneath like brown islands. He changed batteries for a living at one of those big battery houses, but Juan and Willy didn’t know then if he was working or if he was between jobs.
“He may be a billionaire for all I know,” said Frank about his brother.
“I wish he were for your sake, old timer,” said Spigot, who had heard this stuff about Frank’s brother that he was looking for about a hundred times before.
“Well, I could fix my walls in the adobe. They’s cavin in something awful. It used to be a mexicano candy store, you know. All night long I hear the adobe fallin out of the wall like little waterfalls behind the plaster. Adobe runnin down in the wall like sand in an hourglass, so are the days of my life and all that shit. It just keeps runnin. It’s very discouragin.”
“If you found your brother and he were a fuckin billionaire, it would be a storybook endin,” said Spigot.
“A crappy storybook,” Willy said.
“Yeah,” said Juan. “The type people love to read.”
“Well,” Spigot said with a sigh, “I’m going home and did you know you’re closin right now?”
Sure enough, Jipson was locking up the cash register and cabinets with his big bundle of keys. They paid no attention to Spigot going out, but hurried up polishing off their beers. Old Frank the Fart showed no sign of moving on, but he paid his bill, which Sonia gave him.
“Sonia, Sonia...” Juan began as he and Willy made their way to the front of the restaurant.
“I know. You need a ride,” she said sourly.
“You are the nicest waitress,” Willy said, being a kiss-up. Willy had lost his license for six months due to a couple of speeding tickets he couldn’t afford to pay and Juan’s latest car, which had been nothing but Bondo and spray paint, had been stolen two weeks earlier. Without Sonia’s taking them home, they would both be on the bus.
“Shut up and get yer hand off my shoulder,” said Sonia.
Jipson at the cash register suddenly announced, “I want to see everyone outside to talk about my new advertising campaign and what it’s going to mean for all of us.”
Oh boy, thought Juan and Willy, another advertising campaign and a discussion of what it was going to mean for them, which would be more work and less pay, probably.