I can’t remember many days. My last day of college does not stand out. Nor do I remember my last day of high school. But seventh grade does come to mind.

I was having a bad day in school and during art I had words with my teacher. She was having a bad day as well. I remember being held by the shirt collar as this woman with no sense of humor walked me through the halls of John F. Kennedy Junior High School, the whole time telling me how much trouble I was in. That’s like having your ass kicked by a guy while he announces it blow by blow.

I had enough and pulled away from her grip. She grew incensed and grabbed me again, as she took me to the vice principal’s office; by now she was holding me by the hair. Once there, she insisted that I be punished and dramatically recreated a simple situation and turning it into a Greek tragedy, describing it as a brutal attack upon her person. Once in front of the man in charge of discipline, his first comment was, `Well, now you’ve done it. Have a seat young man.’ He called his secretary for my father’s phone number, the whole time saying that once he reached my father I was really in trouble.

(Another in a series of stories on “Surviving Pop” by Florida writer Anthony Quinones, with more on the way in coming weeks.)

I almost felt sorry for this pimple of a man who got his kicks paddling young boys. I did my best to talk my way out of what was going to happen. Sir, I’ve learned my lesson; can’t we just forget the whole matter? I promise that it won’t happen again. With a resounding no, he continued dialing my father’s office, repeating how much trouble I was in. I kept talking, hoping that in some way I could save him. He had no idea that my father would never agree to allow his son to be touched by anyone, especially this power mad midget.

Finally he got through to my father’s office and asked to speak to my Pop. Once on the line with him, he told my father the story and his plans to paddle me. There was silence and his face went pale. He looked at me. His eyes grew glassy. Panic best described the look on his face. The conversation continued, it was very one-sided and when my father had finished telling this man the manner in which his death would come, he politely said thank you and hung up. I had tried to warn him but he was too excited at the act of disciplining such a felon.

The blood started to flow back to his face and he suggested that I wait in the outer office; that my dad would soon be here to collect me. He walked me to his office door pointing to the bench where I should wait.  I sat next to all the other young boys waiting to be punished at the hand of this brave man. He slowly closed the door behind me; you could hear it lock from the other side.

I only had to wait ten minutes when my father entered. He looked at me.

“Where is he”?

I pointed to the door with the sign Vice Principal written across it. My father went for the handle but couldn’t open it. He began to bang on the door screaming “motherfuckers,” and “cock suckers” through the door, daring him to show his face. Every student in the office started laughing. All the secretaries were gasping and holding their chests.

My father asked if that asshole had touched me and I told him no. The head secretary asked that my father leave or she would be forced to call the police. He turned to her and screamed “Suck my cock!!!!” He looked back at me and asked if I was ready to leave. That was my last day of public school. We walked out laughing, all the way to my father’s car.

Well, maybe we should find another place for you to go to school, he said. I don’t think they’re going to let us back in there.

You might be right pop.

I remember that my parents argued that afternoon. Later that evening my father and I boarded a plane for the Bahamas, where we spent the weekend. Come Monday morning I went for an interview at a local prep school, and started the next day.

Several days later a friend called me and asked what had happened? The rumor mill had been abuzz with all kinds of stories, everyone claiming to have witnessed the riot personally. The vice principal stayed in his office for hours. His reputation waned and he never commanded the same respect. I can still picture him cowering under his desk.

*Anthony Quinones lives in Florida and is writing a series of stories about growing up with his father — “Surviving Pop.”

“Hurry up!  We’re late for school!  You’ll like school.  You’re going to be in the same class with your cousin Johnny.  Sister Mary Margaret is expecting us!”

My mother whisked me across the park past the immense statue of Christopher Columbus through the grove of Dutch Elms that arched over the path to St. Michael’s Parish School. I clutched my mother’s hand and looked for something familiar.  I recognized Lucibello’s Pastry Shop and Frank’s Pizzeria across the park, and finally there was the school.

The school was behind the church.  I knew the church well.  We crossed the park every Sunday morning, so I could sit in the pew with my mother and stare at the altar rail and the marble statues all imported from Italy.  I was fascinated by the patterns of light that filtered through the stain glass windows.  The priest’s chanting and the incense made me dizzy.  My mind would wander until my mother would look at me and whisper, “Sit up straight.  Listen to the priest.  This is Mass!”

I shivered in the mid-morning sun and tried to kick some leaves as my mother pulled me across the street.  The fall term had already started earlier in the week, and school was in session when we entered the principal’s office.  Sister Mary Margaret was tall and wore a long white robe with black trim.  I could see only her face.  My mother quickly kissed me goodbye, and Sister Mary Margaret escorted me up to my kindergarten classroom on the third floor.

My teacher, Sister Mary Rose, stood up from her desk at the back of the classroom.  She showed me my place in a long row of iron desks with scarred tops that were bolted together on rails.  As soon as I sat down, the row of desks wiggled, and the kids turned to look at me and giggled.  Sister gave me a sheet of paper, a pencil, and a ruler and told me to copy the shapes that were on the blackboard.

Sister walked up and down the rows to make sure that all the boys and girls copied the neat, straight lines correctly.  More than once she snapped her ruler on the shoulder of any boy who dared whisper, laugh, or even turn around.  I kept my head down and stared at my desk top.  I could hear the soft sounds of breathing and desks creaking.

Suddenly the buzzer sounded for recess!  Sister told us to leave everything on our desks. She marched us in formation out to hall, and all the boys and girls scrambled up the steps to the roof.  I was astonished to see a playground on the rooftop!  What would happen if you fell off this roof?   There was a waist high wall around the edges of the playground, and it was divided by a long, thick rope – the boys’ side vs. the girls’ side!

The boys quickly formed up for baseball and ran to different places on a faded diamond that was painted on the playground.  The biggest kid yelled at me, “Hey you – you new kid!  You’re in the outfield.  Get out there by the rope!”

I stood at the rope and watched the little girls on the other side playing something like hopscotch, squealing and arguing, darting and dodging chalk squares.  I was five years old.  I had never played baseball. I looked around this strange world for my cousin Johnny who had not been in Sister Mary Rose’s classroom.  Maybe he was somewhere on this baseball team?  Just as I started to look for him, the batter swatted the ball.

“Hey you!  Who is that kid?  Does anybody know him?”  Everyone yelled at me, “Hey, new kid!  Get the ball!”

“What are you doing on the girls’ side of the playground?”  She grabbed me and dragged me to the parapet.  She hoisted me up and held me over the edge.  I hung there!  I was frozen with fear as I stared at the traffic in the street four stories below!

“What is your name?” demanded Sister.  “Even though you are new, you are going to learn the rules at this school!  I’m going to show you what we do to little boys who don’t follow the rules!”

All I could hear were the screaming voices from the other side of the playground!  “Hey, what happened to that new kid?   Where is he?”

After Sister set me down, I sprinted back to the boys’ side.  Recess was over, and we marched down the steps to our classroom.

That first day of school on the roof I was the new kid who began to learn the rules.  From that day on at St. Michael’s, I learned never to cross certain lines, and instinctively I knew where the boundaries were.

*David Orr was born in Connecticut and grew up in Arizona.  He lives in Tucson and has recently retired after teaching high school English for 35 years.

—

More fab TYTT stories:

Praise Betty by Mo Burke

Killing Donald Evans by Terry Soto

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I’d known Angel a few weeks when he told me about his being sealed by blowtorch in the underbelly of a truck.  His words flowed fast, like the cork had blown on something bottled inside him, and the telling and my interest gave him great satisfaction.

We were tagging elms with yellow plastic tape in the tree nursery where we worked.  “You cannot imagine,” he said. He had an easy, boyish smile, almost devilish, but his eyes revealed a perpetual weariness.

“Tell me,” I said, stretching out an eight-inch piece of tape and snipping it from the roll.

“We lay like this.” He stood rigid, his arms pinned to his sides.  “Is very close, you know? With the shoes of the other mens is rubbing my head here and here,” he said, tapping his ears.

“How many of you?”

His sudden, wide smile puzzled me.

“Is ten of us.  This space is very, very small.” He stepped to a nearby elm and bent a thin branch for me to secure the length of tape.

We had to tag the best looking elms for a landscaper who’d pick up the trees the following day.  Angel could tell the caliper of a tree with a glance.  We’d walk down the field, he’d select the trees, and we’d tag them.

I didn’t want to be nosy, and I figured he’d be guarded about telling me much more, but  I was wrong.

“I try not to move in this truck, is so tight like… how you say… the little fishes in the can?”

“Sardines?” I say, tying a strip of tape to the limb.

“Si, is like the sardines.  And the coyote – he is the man I pay the moneys to bring me in these truck – he close the hole in the truck with the… how you say… the fire, you know?”

“Blow torch?”

“Si.  Is very dark in this place.  Is very long time in this place.”

“How long did it take you to cross?”

“Oh, is many hours!”

“Pretty scary, I bet.” I said, as we made our way down the row, eyeing trees to select.

“I think I will die on this trip.  I could no tell is day or the night, is Mexico or el norte outside this space.”

“Did you and the others talk?”

“No, not so much because we is scared of the coyote in the outside, if he hear us or if the border patrol hear us.  We not talking in there.  But then one man he get very crazy in the head,” Angel says, his perpetual smile lost now.  “Is very bad.”

“Crazy in the head?” I said.

“Si, is true.  He say crazy things.  He screaming and he wanting his mama, but is no space in there and is no mama, either.  I want to hit him in the face!  You see, is no because I am a bad guy, but this man, he could get us caught, you know?”

“Did you hit him?”

“No.  Is impossible. The… how you say… the top?  Is right here, is very near to my nose.  Is no able to move to hit this man.”

I shook my head, unsure what to say, thinking about my story, my life, and how simple and unencumbered my existence would seem if he were to ask me to tell my personal narrative.

(Michel Stone’s first novel, The Iguana Tree, is just out now on Hub City Press, about a Mexican couple’s trip into the United States, ending in South Carolina. It has been called a “compassionate yet unsentimental story [recalling] the works of John Steinbeck.” …    Read an excerpt here.)

“Then the mens, they have to piss, right?  And what can they do but they have to go.  So these mens pisses, and one man he… how you say?”  Angel shoves a dirty finger into the back of his throat.

“Vomit? Throw up?” I said.

“Si, he vomit and smelling very, very bad in this truck.”

As we made our way across the field, tagging the last couple of trees, I wondered what I’d do in the situation Angel just described.

I said, “Did you pray?”  I fold my hands in prayer and briefly close my eyes to illustrate my question.

“Oh, si!  I says to God, ‘Please! Please! Please!’  And the other mens I can hear them talk to God and to the Virgin, they say like me, “Please, please!”

I tried to picture Angel prone, scared, and lying in human waste among his fellow travelers with barely a few inches between their faces and the top of their hidden, sealed compartment. I imagined the unbearable stench.

(View a trailer to The Iguana Tree)

Suddenly I am thankful Angel is a thin man.  How could he have fit into the space otherwise?  Maybe a plump, well-fed fellow wouldn’t have had Angel’s motivation to leave Mexico in such a way, under the protection of a coyote, in search of something better.

“But you made it across,” I said, smiling at him.

“Si,” he said, his mischievous grin contradicting the horrendous tale he’d just shared, the truth about his deliverance to el norte in the dark belly of that truck.

“When was this?” I said.

“This was in five months ago.  In Marzo.  You know Marzo?”

“March,” I said.

“Si.  In March I come here.  Soon is my wife coming and my boy.”  His face darkened when he said this, and for a moment I suspected I’d misunderstood, imagining he’d be thrilled to be reunited with his family.

“Where are they now?” I said.

“In my country, in my town, Cortazar.”

My familiarity with Mexican geography was minimal.  “Is that near the sea, or near the border?”

“No, no, is no near the sea and this town is very far from the border.  Is in middle of my country,” he said.

Then I pictured his young wife – How old was Angel? 23? – traveling up through the center of her country with a small child in tow, trying to cross into America.

Perspiration dampened the front of Angel’s shirt in this muggy August South Carolina heat, and I wonder how insufferable a sealed undercarriage of a truck would be in Mexico or Texas this time of year.

I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.  “Why’d you do it, Angel?  Why come here?”

“Is much better here, Michel.  The moneys I make here in one week?  You know in my country I make this moneys in many weeks. Is much better here.”

My relatives owned the farm where Angel and I worked, and I kept up with him through them for years after that summer.

His wife and son did make it to el norte that autumn, their journey across the border different but equally as harrowing as Angel’s.

Then one day I learned they were gone.  Disappeared.  Rumored to have returned to Mexico.  Some farm hands mumbled that Angel had begun drinking too much, had gotten in trouble with the law, and left before he got locked up.

Where is he now?  His wife?  Their child?  I often wonder.

___

*Michel Stone is a writer living in Spartanburg, S.C. Her acclaimed first novel,  The Iguana Tree, is just out on Hub City Press, and available in hardback or Kindle. Contact her at www.michelstone.com.

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More great TYTT stories from authors with new books out:

Hit Then Run by Gerry Hadden, author and European correspondent for PRI’s The World

Requiem for the Girl Next Door by novelist Emory Holmes II

My First Bank Robbery by Jeffrey Scott Hunter, federal prison inmate and crime novelist

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—

In the 1970s, Pomona was a big thrift store of a city in the smog-covered valley east of Los Angeles that bore its name.

I grew up in the neighboring town of Claremont, which had five colleges, two graduate schools, a strict zoning code and large old oaks and elms.

But by the time I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Pomona was about two decades past its prime. The Fox Theater downtown had once been a major venue. Bing Crosby had once played its Fox Theater. As I entered junior high school, The Fox showed B movies, then B movies in Spanish.

Pomona’s downtown was quiet. In the early 1960s, city fathers were persuaded that outdoor shopping malls were the wave of the future. They put in a fountain and piped in music. A Buffums department store was supposed to feed the smaller shops along the mall with customers.

The Pomona Mall was finished by the mid-1960s, about the time that the wave of the future turned out to be the indoor mall. A decade later, pawn shops replaced the jewelry stores and boutiques, which left for the air-conditioned comfort of the Montclair Plaza about 10 miles away.

Pomona had neither luck nor luster; it was a flowery polyester shirt 10 years out of style. On Holt Boulevard, the city made a vain effort at attracting glitz. Anything went along Holt, as long as it had neon and an oceanic parking lot. Running parallel a few blocks south was Mission Avenue, where Pomona gave up entirely and bared its true soul. Neon was too expensive for the shops on Mission. The United Mission Inn was on Mission. So was the YMCA. Both were home to derelicts and drifters who paid by the week. They were men who tried to hide their desperation behind greased-back hair and blazers one size too big.

Midway between Holt and Mission on Reservoir Street sat Tropical Ice Cream. A `Help Wanted’ sign was painted on the building in bright red letters. I’d seen the sign before. I’d gone in once and learned that to work there I needed a driver’s license and, for insurance purposes, I had to be 19.

It was September of 1976, about three weeks before the start of my senior year in high school. I was back from a summer trip and I needed a job that I could quit easily when school began. I was 17. I went down to Tropical.

A pasty-faced man with gray hair met me at the door. I think his name was Ed.

Nineteen, I told him. He asked for my driver’s license. Simple math would have told him my true age. You’re hired, he said.

I had to work one day free for a driver who would train me. Then I’d be working for myself, and Tropical Ice Cream. I’d make 30 percent of whatever I sold. That day they put me on a truck with Wilson. Wilson was a nice old guy. He was retired from some job that had worn him down, but Social Security didn’t pay enough, so now he spent his golden years living in a trailer home and selling ice cream around the Pomona Valley. That’s how I figured it anyway. He didn’t talk much about his personal life.

Wilson was like a lot of guys at Tropical: pensioners who had never saved enough to make retirement a time when they could take life easy. Some did it to get out of the house and away from their wives. Tropical attracted another type: the Down-and-Outer. They were usually younger men. This, apparently, was the only job they could hold. Anyway, Tropical didn’t ask for references. Nor did management get too upset when an employee didn’t show up for work. This happened often. Management figured the driver had moved on or died.

These drifters were usually less dependable than the pensioners, so Herm Trop showed them no mercy. Herm Trop and his brother, whose name I’ve long forgotten, owned the company. Each was as squat as a fire hydrant, with curly brown hair, thick necks and a bustling waddle to their walks.

The Trops had played football. Their gridiron memories – from the days when helmets had no facemasks — were dear to both men. Graying photographs of them in action graced the imitation-walnut paneling of a dark room where the ice cream men counted their money late in the afternoon. The Trops had played the front line.

We always knew Herm was coming long before he appeared in front of us. His gruff, cussing baritone was the soundtrack to everyone’s day at Tropical Ice Cream. I don’t remember his brother saying much. But Herm never passed up an opportunity to bark his wisdom at his crew of retirees and alcoholics. He clearly viewed today’s male specimen as lacking the toughness that allowed him to claw his way to the top of the Pomona Valley ice cream game. Few who stayed had the gumption to talk back to Herm Trop.

At Tropical, the ice cream men were gruff, unshaven and with poor teeth. They grunted a lot. They never, for example, said “Yes, ma’am,” or “Okie-dokie,” or “Coming right up.” They showed little feeling for the kids.

I figured I’d be different. At first I was eager to engage the children. Countless five-year-olds came to my truck, plopping 17 cents in gooey change on my counter.

“How much can I get with this much?”

“Well, let’s see,” I’d say, trying my best to sound like Mister Rogers. “How much do you have? One, two, three. Do you know how much this is worth? That’s worth five, so now you have eight.”

And so on. Finally I’d have to let him know the brutal truth. He could only afford a Popsicle.

“But I want a drumstick.”

“You don’t have enough for a drumstick.”

A drumstick, a cone of vanilla ice cream covered in chocolate syrup and sprinkled with nuts, went for 35 cents. Our positions thus stalemated, the discussion would go on as a line would form. One of us would eventually relent. As time went on, it was the kid.

In time, I became more “efficient.” I’d quickly count the kid’s change and give him two or three choices. I’d grown to understand a little about the old men I worked with. They figured that life owed them more for years of toil than a retirement spent in the oppressive Los Angeles heat in a tin box on wheels selling ice cream to kids with dirty faces.

Wilson and I spent that first day rumbling along his usual route through Walnut, another faceless L.A. suburb. Like so many towns, I knew of Walnut only from the tacky television commercials where some discount furniture mogul with a bad toupee would stand in front of a dinette set reading from cue cards that announced his latest great deal and easy credit terms. He’d then launch into his inventory of stores around the L.A. basin where these great deals were available: La Puente, La Canada, Marina Del Rey, Glendale, Costa Mesa, Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, Ontario. Then he’d usually finish with something like: “And our new store in Walnut. Se habla Espanol.”

Here I finally was in Walnut. As our jingle blared out the loudspeakers and down its quiet streets, Wilson shared with me the sacred tricks of the ice cream trade. Jealously guarded tips like: “Go slow,” “Turn your jingle off when you’re selling” (a lesson I quickly ignored since I didn’t see the point. The jingle let people know I was there), and of course, “Put the most expensive ice cream at the bottom of the freezer because people don’t buy it as much.”

Wilson showed me how to fill the truck freezer. Every morning, the drivers would load up, ordering that day’s product from a porthole in the Tropical building. Behind that window was the company freezer. Gusts of frost blew out of it into the early morning sunshine. Inside, two guys would shuttle between the window and the stock, filling orders. The product came hurtling out: boxes of Ice Cream Sandwiches, Drumsticks, Sundaes, Push-ups, Popsicles, and their red-white-and-blue, rocket-shaped cousin, the Astrojet.

Wilson taught me to read a routebook, a tablet that had the turns written out from the moment the driver left the Tropical lot: “Turn left on Mira Vista. Turn right on Del Mar. Turn left on Rancho Val Verde,” and so on.

Under the smog and relentless sun, the truck grew furnace hot. To quench my thirst that first day, I gulped down six orange sodas. I returned home with teeth coated in sugary moss. I never ate or drank anything out of my truck again, and I haven’t had an orange soda since that day. Instead I brought a gallon jug of water, put it in the cooler and drank it throughout the day.

After the first day, I was a pro. I’d sub for whatever driver turned up missing that day. I often had work. I did Baldwin Park, Hacienda Heights, Upland and other cities that I can’t remember. The jingle was my constant companion and even now, 36 years later, it still comes readily to mind.

Only once was I asked to sell someone marijuana. “The other guy did,” said the disheartened customer, when I told him he was out of his mind. And only once did someone ask if I wasn’t scared, since someone had shot at a competitor’s truck a few days earlier.

About two weeks into my Tropical Ice Cream stint, I walked into work and heard Herm. Drivers stood in a circle around him and another man whose pride Herm was dissecting.

The driver, a scruffy younger fellow, had apparently had his truck towed from Santa Fe Springs when it broke down the day before. Repairmen later determined the problem to be a snapped fan belt. Herm seemed to think that any moron could have figured that out.

“A simple fucking fan belt. Don’t you know how to fix a fan belt? It’s the easiest goddamn thing in the world.”

And the abuse went on and on. The drivers crowded around, looking uncomfortable, but drawn to the smell of blood. Finally the driver, whose name I never knew, could take no more. In front of all of us, he began to cry. He held up his hands. They trembled.

“You see these hands,” he screamed, losing control as he tried to explain. “They used to slap ab in some of the best restaurants around. Now they can’t do it any more. I used to be one of the best abalone chefs around. Fuck your job.”

He ran out and stalked toward Mission. I never found out what was wrong with his hands and why they no could longer cook abalone.

We all stood there for a moment, embarrassed. Then Herm broke the silence that he could never stand for long.

“I don’t know what his problem is? All I said was it’s easy to fix a fucking fan belt. Jesus, he takes things too personal. Everybody back to work.”

Then with a wave of his cigar, he was off.

We all took our cue and slowly dispersed. Ed came up to me and informed me that the Santa Fe Springs route had an opening that day. I’d never heard of the place, not even on television commercials.

He gave me a routebook, an ice cream order and as I was walking away, he said, “Oh, and watch out for Big Al.”

I was a little too numbed by what had just occurred to wonder much about what he meant.

Santa Fe Springs proved to be about 30 miles away, over the hills and into the Los Angeles basin. It was near Downey. Downey, as any kid who watched commercials could tell you, was the home of Bob Spreen Cadillac: “Where the freeways meet (pause) in Downey,” went his commercial. I was glad to finally know where Downey was.

Still, I doubted I would make much. Santa Fe Springs sounded middle class. Ice cream men learn quickly that the best selling is in blue-collar neighborhoods, which can’t afford store-bought ice cream, but have the money for the occasional Popsicle or Push-up for their kids. So in the 1970s nothing warmed the ice cream man’s heart like driving down streets lined with big and battered American sedans, Doughboy swimming pools and seeing guys in blue mechanics shirts and Budweiser baseball caps going to work.

Once in town, I followed the routebook, then parked under some trees to read my path for the day. With my jingle going loud, I didn’t hear him come up.

“Hey, you!”

I looked up. Next to me was another ice cream truck. Sitting in the springy driver’s seat, which was begging for mercy, sat an enormous squat white man, with a cap, a mustache and a scraggly beard. His belly-button peeked out from beneath a faded blue t-shirt.

“You work for Trop?’

I nodded.

“You see that book in your hand there, that’s my route. I wrote it,” he said. “This is my town. I’m going to dust your ass of the road.”

He roared off. As I watched him go, I said to myself, `There goes Big Al.’

I don’t remember much about that morning, except that I didn’t see Big Al at all. I forgot he existed and concentrated on making a killing.

I did all right that morning, for a morning. Santa Fe Springs wasn’t as middle-class as I’d feared. I saw a couple of Doughboy pools. And a few women were out watering their yards with curlers tangled in their hair. The yards were small, the grass was not too green. It was going to be an excellent day.

Still, any ice cream man knows the real selling doesn’t start until the sun is high in the sky. It was just after noon when I saw Big Al again. We were both making turns onto parallel streets, a block apart. He must have seen me because as I rounded the block and made a left onto the street between us, he had already made a right. He had sped up, come down the street ahead of me, and now slowed to a crawl as I trailed him. Down the street we marched, our jingles turned up loud. We sounded like a calliope run amok. The peace of the street was ruptured. Housewives came to their doors, holding their children to them.

Half way down the street, Big Al stopped for a customer, blocking my way. I could only sit and wait until he finished his sale. By this time our dueling jingles had brought the neighborhood to their front doors.

Big Al moved on and I left him as he turned down the next block.

The war escalated throughout the afternoon. Half a dozen times we met on some quiet street. Big Al, more familiar with the lay of the land, usually had the advantage. As the afternoon progressed, I found myself less concerned with selling and more preoccupied with beating Big Al onto the next street and leading our mad calliope for while before I stopped in the middle of the street and blocked his path. On a couple of occasions I sped by little children waving for me to stop. Wilson’s counsel to “Go Slow” was forgotten.

Once, as I stopped to sell, Big Al sent over a stringy-haired teenage boy who I’d seen working in his truck. I’m still mystified as to why. The kid stood in line, trying to act nonchalant. Some kind of reconnaissance mission, no doubt. He got to the front of the line and I told him to go to hell. He walked off, apparently lacking the intelligence he was supposed to gather.

Through it all, I thought of all the reasons why Big Al might have it in for me. Clearly, when he looked at me he saw Herm Trop. I could imagine Herm cussing the big fellow out.

Still, I had my competitive edge honed fine when about 3:30 that afternoon I was finishing the route for the second time. I found Big Al stopped and selling. Great. A golden opportunity to wreak havoc on the fat man. I parked beside him, relishing the thought of stealing his customers and forcing him to back up to get around me.

The plan was succeeded. As our jingles rocked yet another quiet neighborhood, I took three of his kids. I think I even sold a drumstick. I was hot. Big Al would be displeased.

Sure enough, his tires squealed as he backed up to get around me. I stood at my window selling Astrojets as fast as I could. The kids were all mine now.

I remember vaguely sensing him not pass by, but stopping instead. Strange.

Then I heard something fall into the front of my truck. The next moment the vehicle shuddered with a thunderous explosion. I fell back. The sound ricocheted against the tin walls. Shards of paper littered the floor. My ears were humming.

Outside a mother stared up at me with her mouth agape. She quickly pulled her son to her as I cursed and ran to the driver’s seat, pulled away and gave chase. I rounded a curve and saw him at a stop sign.

I accelerated. Big Al was mine. I’d like to say I rammed him and sent him headfirst through the front window. But at the last moment I lost my nerve and only bumped him.

My ears were still ringing and I was dazed from the attack. But I quickly realized my mistake. Big Al was truly enormous. Not tall, but wide. His arms were like hams and his stomach still peered out at the world from beneath his sweaty t-shirt. His truck sighed with relief as he got out.

He trundled up to me, hitching up his pants and adjusting his cap. There was no fooling him.

“You hit me.”

Here I figured I’d play dumb.

“What? You threw a cherry bomb in my truck and I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

He reached in and switched off my jingle.

“You hit me,” he said with a sneer, “and if I wasn’t on parole I’d rearrange your face.”

I left Santa Fe Springs that afternoon and didn’t return for 20 years or so.

I stayed for another three weeks at Tropical, working intermittently, then school started and I never went back.

I’d love to know what became of Big Al. I saw where Herm Trop died a few years back, at the age of 87.

Pomona’s downtown has made an unexpected and successful transformation, and the Pomona Mall is now an arts and antiques district and the Fox Theater has been restored. The last time I drove down Reservoir, there wasn’t an ice cream truck around for miles.

—

More cool TYTT stories:

Caught in the Middle by Jaime Bugarin

Rosa by Anonymous

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In the spring of 2009 my husband and I were backpacking around Nicaragua when two

Laurie Trautman

women befriended me on a public bus from Granada to Managua.  After we stepped off the bus, they hailed a taxi cab which we all planned to share.

“Camarón que se duerme, se lo lleva el corriente” [The sleeping shrimp gets carried off with the current].  She laughs. Yes, it’s funny. At times, if I am not paying attention, maybe I will lose something important or miss a good opportunity. It’s a good saying.

They were two women — a bit ugly and fat and dirty, but two women. With smiles and pretty words. With patience to listen to my bad Spanish. The cab we got into was old and shabby, but it was a cab, wasn’t it?

They waited about five minutes before letting their smiles fade.  The knife one put to my throat was small. Small and sharp and serrated. I did not see it coming. We were sleeping like shrimp, like camarones. Pink, with the flesh exposed.

The two men in the front seats did not have smiles. They did not have patience. “Peen number! Peen number!” The woman sitting next to me slapped me hard in the face. My ten-dollar wedding ring already in her purse. Money in my bra, her hands in my underwear- not a good hiding place.

People on the street around us see; people know what is going on. No one says anything. They are content that the current is not carrying them. Today it is two gringos. Only two gringos. No vale nada.  A ten dollar wedding ring is worth more. Two gringos, and Americanos too! Less than zero.

Her fat leg is pressing against mine. Three hours, and her fat leg. Her sweaty breasts. Six people now in a small, dirty car. Two camarones and four thieves. This ride is a nightmare for us; a dream come true for them. Good luck for them. Bank after bank. Instant money. The bank of the world. Only four numbers and so much money. Two hundred dollars at this ATM, two hundred at the next.  Let’s keep going.

It is hot. There are beads of sweat running between my breasts, where my money had been a few hours before. My throat is dry. But I do not want water. I do not want anything. I want to wake up. I want to get the fuck out of this car.

They say that when a person has a traumatic experience they often do not fully remember it. It is a form of defense. The leg of that woman. I remember that. I remember the feeling of having confidence in humanity. Of trusting a smiling face.

My husband remembers the desire to kill another person. A woman. Perhaps a mother. Maybe she has children. Children that want pretty things. Food. A bed. A wedding ring, silver and shining.

Its fucking hot. There is so much sweat that I am almost cold.

I think about the photographs in my camera. Cathedrals painted yellow. The style of the conquistadors, bullet holes hidden with paint. I think about the book I’m in the middle of reading. My birth control pills. My sunglasses. I do not think of what could happen. How bad it could get. I do not think about all the money they could have if they use several days to get it. I do not think of what might happen to me at night. My husband’s heart breaking. Their hatred. Evil is born of evil.

But the ATM only spouts so much money in one day.  It’s not worth the trouble of keeping two obvious tourists any longer. A dusty street is a good place to leave them- there is a lot of loot to sort through now.

Finally free from the car, with no shoes, no money, no things. Only life. A life that we have another chance to live.  Right now her children have new shoes. The shoes of a gringa. “Una gringa muy estúpida” she tells her kids.

Is there anyone here on this dirt street that will help us? Help two Americans? Two rich gringos, who have friends and relatives in the United States who are richer than this little town. With white skin, silver rings.

Perhaps for each devil’s heart there is the heart of an angel. Does this make the world a balanced place?  Does it make it okay? There are always people that help, aren’t there?  Maybe they don’t want to help, but they do. They would prefer to look in the other direction.

But now these gringos can see how it is. Their bags are empty. They have a knowledge of violence. A knowledge of poverty. Three hours struggling for their lives. Thirty years for us.  Their vacation has finished. How sad. Que triste.

Yes, we will help them. After everything, we are human. Humans that are valued differently at different times, but humans nonetheless. Yes, we will show them how to return to where they are from. Its better that they leave, that we do not have to be reminded of all that we do not have. In the United States they have everything they need.

In Nicaragua, there is a saying, ‘matar dos aves con un solo tiro’ [to kill two birds with one bullet]. One gun- stone are for little children.  Americans do not know what it is to live with war. Only to watch it on television.

At the airport in Managua, we are surrounded by guys with surf boards. Sunburned tourists. Young couples that bought some real estate. So cheap! And right on the beach!

Back in the US, the customs officer tell us, “Welcome home, but you need to go back and claim your luggage prior to going through customs.”  A plastic shopping bag and a change of clothes, a toothbrush, a book, that’s all we have.  Someone else claimed the rest.  In all, we lost about $1,000 cash, and everything we had aside from the clothes we were wearing (including my shoes). And due to bank security and homeowner’s insurance, we got it all back.

I’d like to think there is a moral to this story. I could cite some statistics about per capita consumption or illiteracy or poverty or crime.  But in the end, this is a story of wants.  Wanting what someone else has and stealing it from them because there is no other way to get it. I could call it greed, but then perhaps I would be accused of being a wealthy American hypocrite.

It is also a story about the value of a human life.  I could get political and argue that for many years the United States government placed no value on the life of Nicaraguans.  But that is not my story.  My story is about bad luck and the wrong taxi cab. About what is lost when you look into another person’s eyes and see what hatred looks like.

The violence that exists in the human heart.

How it feels to know that your life is worth nothing more than a 4 digit pin number.  How insignificant it can be.

*Laurie Trautman grew up in New Jersey and is now a graduate student at the University of Oregon, pursuing a degree in immigration studies.

—

More great TYTT stories:

Dear Society by Cavin O’Feral

http://www.samquinones.com/true-tales/dear-society-a-prison-letter/

Sa Lu Bri Ous by Helen Weatherell-Bay

http://www.samquinones.com/true-tales/sa-lu-bri-ous/

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The night before the score me and my crime partner, Dave, had seven dollars between us, and had been sleeping in our friend’s driveway in my van. With the seven bucks we decided to go to a pizza parlor and get a pitcher of beer while we discussed our future.

At this time I was still on state probation for an assault, an ounce of coke and a pound of pot. Dave is out on bond under a different name from another state.

A month before, I was still in the good graces of my girlfriend and staying at her place. Then I get a collect call from Dave telling me that he’d just been picked up in Florida under another name and he needed to get bonded out before they found out who he really was. As it was winter, this was the northeast, and me being a roofer, I was skating by on fumes. Every now and then I’d pull a rabbit out of my hat betting on a football game, but nothing over a hundred bucks. Lucky for Dave the Super Bowl was the next day.

So I tell him, “Yeah, I got you. Don’t worry.” He’s happy when we hang up, but as for me, I’m like, `What the fuck, how am I going to get the cash to bail him out?’ Then it hits me. I’ll call my bookie and make a Super Bowl bet. I think I’ve got all the answers. So I make the call, and tell him that I want to lay two grand, and he’s like, “Are you fucking nuts? How are you going to pay if you lose?”

See, he knows me. I drink in his bar and he also knows that I’m a roofer. Without hesitation, I answer “I have some new construction coming up and they have to have a roof on so they can sheet-rock it.”

Finally he gives in and lets the bet ride. Long story short, I win the bet by one point. Girlfriend’s so happy, she’d hugs me and says, “Now we can take care of some of these bills.” Then she sees that I’m not celebrating her wonderful idea. She pulls back and squints.

“Who do you owe?”

I say, “Nobody, I don’t owe anyone.”

She says, “So what’s the fucking problem, Jeff? We need to take care of those bills.”

“I know,” I say, “but Dave needs fifteen hundred to bail out of jail.”

That was pretty much the last straw and she storms off to the bedroom.

The next day I collect my winnings and send Dave a money order for fifteen hundred, and he jumps on the first thing smoking and heads back home.

Now, a month later, we find ourselves flat broke, sleeping in my van and planning to hit a bank. One good thing in all this is that we’re still free. We leave the pizza parlor confident about tomorrow’s score. We’ve already cased the bank and were we’re going to get a hot box — a stolen car. So we drive back to our friend’s driveway. But I forgot to tell you that I have a nine a.m. court date for the next day. As if I didn’t already have enough to worry about, I got to be in court, too.

Later that night, we go and steal the hot box, change the plates and park it behind our buddy’s place in an empty lot.

Nine a.m. rolls around pretty fast, and I’m being awakened by Dave who’s saying, “Hey, Jeff, don’t you have to be in court at nine?”

My eyes pop open and I spring up off the van floor, grab a gallon of water, splash my face then brush my teeth.

Outside the van the morning is dark and gloomy with a raw nip in the air like snow. I make it to the courthouse by 9:20, seeing as it was only a short drive across town.

Inside, court is already congested. People are huddled up in small groups all over the lobby. I hang around a while until they call my name. The judge starts talking to me like we’re old pals about all of my fines, but I can’t hear a word he’s saying, because I’ve got too much other shit running through my head.

Anyway, when I finally do come back to reality I hear him say, “That will be two hundred dollars. When will you be able to pay? And it has to be today because theses fines are already over due.”

I answer, “In a couple of hours,” then turn and bolt out of the courtroom.

I still have to drive twenty minutes in the opposite direction of the bank to borrow my brother’s car. See, we can’t take a chance in driving away from the hot box in my van after the score, because it’s way too noticeable. My van looks more like a death mobile. When people see it they always give it a second look and we couldn’t have that. That’s why I need my brother’s car: it’s plain, and blends in nicely with the other cars.

So here I am tearing through the crowded courthouse lobby when I see the scum bag that ripped off my now-old girlfriend’s CD player. And the dirt bag is with his mother, and she looks half in the bag. I stop inches from him, death in my eyes. See, for the past two weeks I’d been hunting him, every since Pam asked me if I had her CD player. I even beat the shit out of his brother in hopes of him coming after me, which never happened. So for the past two weeks we’d been playing cat and mouse. I knew that it only a matter of time before I caught him in the right spot, and on any other day this would have been it. Seeing me, he thinks he’s safe but from the look in his eye he’s not so sure. Who in their right mind would assault someone in the middle of a crowded courthouse. Little did he know that I was pressed for time or I would have stomped him right there, but today I had a bank to rob. I didn’t need the cops following me to the bank, know what I mean? So he gets to live to get his ass kicked another day.

(Order Jeffrey Scott Hunter’s crime novel, Paragon, available on Kindle at Amazon.com.)

Still, I say, “You’re a piece of shit for stealing Pam’s CD player after she let you and your sleazebag girlfriend stay at her place.”

He answers back: “It wasn’t me;  it was Kathy, she stole it.”

I move closer to him and the bank starts to disappear from my mind. All I want to do is tear him to pieces when I hear his mother say, “Not here, boys.” I give him one last nasty look and burn off.

When I hop back into the van, Dave notices my change of attitude and asks, ” You look a little wired up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, “I just ran into Bobby in the courthouse. His day will come.

Forty minutes later, we park the van back in our friend’s driveway, Dave hops behind the wheel of my brother’s car and I get the hot box. Now we drive the thirty minutes to our prearranged switch spot, park the clean car and make a pass by the bank in the hot box.

For weapons, we managed to scrape up an old .38 and a 30-30 lever-action rifle, with no extra ammo.

On the second pass we decide that it’s go time. We pull into the bank’s parking lot and pull down our ski masks. I’m so jacked up that I go blasting into the bank before Dave can even get out of the hot box. Inside I start screaming and yelling for everyone to get down on the floor. They’re bewildered and so as I say. Dave comes in and handles everyone in the lobby while I vault the counter, push the tellers to the floor and clean out every drawer within sixty seconds, stuffing all the money into a laundry bag. There’s no slow motion on this one. I’m so pumped up things are moving at a thousand miles an hour. The slow motion would come later as I matured as a bank robber.

In time, I learned to slow everything down instead of flying around a bank like a nut. I learned to take my time but also hurry up. I also learned the number one lesson: never use out of state plates. When in Rome, do as the Romes do.

But for now the only thing pumping through my veins is pure adrenaline.

Back in the hot box, as we’re leaving the bank’s parking lot, Dave says, “How much money did you get?” I answer, “I don’t know, maybe five grand.”

A short distance away, we pull off our masks, park the hot box and change vehicles. I tell Dave to lay down on the floor in the back seat, because the cops will be looking for two guys. We make the thirty-minute ride back to my van without seeing one cop. At the van we hop into the back and dump out the cash to count our winnings.

Dave and I both freak at the huge pile of money and Dave says in a dazed voice, “Hey man, that looks like a lot more than five grand.”

The final count was a shade over twenty-nine thousand dollars — that’s fourteen-five a piece. Dave gives me back the fifteen hundred that I sent him to bond out with — so my take was sixteen thousand dollars, when just earilier I couldn’t even rub two nickels together.

I count out two hundred dollars for my court fines and put away the rest. I still had to go back to court, then drop off my brother’s car.

When I get up to the court clerk’s window, she tells me “Mr. Hunter, you ran out of the courtroom so fast you didn’t hear what the judge said. He dropped one of your fines. You only owe one hundred and fifty dollars.”

Was this turning out to be a great day or what?

By the time Dave and I dropped off my brother’s car, it was pushing 3 p.m. and we hadn’t eaten since 6 p.m. the night before. So we go straight to a steak house and chow down.

Being an adrenaline junkie, I soon was hooked on doing banks. Dave, being a gambling degenerate, had to do banks. So we kept on, robbing them until 1992, when we became suspects in a bank robbery. And then the chase was on. But that’s a whole other story.

*Jeffrey Scott Hunter, 47, is serving a 29-year prison term for bank robbery (BOP# 11557-014) in a federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana. He is the author of the crime novel, Paragon, available on Kindle at Amazon.com. He can be contacted at Oakdale FCI federal prison.

I go to the ballet for the same reason people go to watch NASCAR: The pile up in turn number three. For a long time, I’d had the same ballet experience as everybody else. Making fun of guys in tights. Going to see the holiday productions of the Nutcracker and the annual pain of watching Swan Lake.

Then one day, while visiting family in the nation’s capital, I was invited to go to the ballet for real. Where men wore tuxedos and women donned evening gowns. It was like attending the Oscars. Senators and congressmen were there. There were Africans in robes and ambassadors from several countries. It was the Saturday evening production of Don Quixote at the Kennedy Center, starring the most famous dancer in the world, Mikhail Baryshnikov.

The lights went down and the curtain started to open. I was nervous. People couldn’t stay in their seats.

Then the announcer came over the sound system. Due to having performed for underprivileged children of Washington D.C. earlier in the day, he said, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland will not perform tonight’s ballet. Instead, they will be replaced by their understudies — a Mr. Bujones and a Ms. Van Hamel.

The audience went wild. A man two rows in front of our group stood up and shook his fist. The Japanese ambassador, who was sitting in the presidential box, walked out in protest, with his entourage in tow. The crowd went mad.

Then the music started, the crowd slowly composed itself, and the dancing began. It was nice, but nothing special and the audience knew it.

“Poor technique,” one woman, seated directly behind me, announced very loudly.

Everyone agreed. I continued to watch. I could feel my eyes starting to close. Then, during the village scene, the peasants were jumping and everyone on stage was laughing. Right in front of me, the lead dancer threw the prima ballerina into the air and dropped her on to the stage. Without missing a beat, he picked her up again threw her into the air and dropped her a second time. Now you could see the bone sticking out of her ankle as she lay on the floor.

The lead dancer was panicking; the audience was in shock. The lead dancer grabbed a peasant girl and threw her into the air. She fell as well. By this time the lead ballerina had crawled off the stage with a broken ankle. The peasant girl now lay on the floor too afraid to move. The music kept playing but no one was dancing. Slowly the curtain descended and the music stopped. The announcer once again came over the loud speaker as the lights went up. Due to an accident we will have a short intermission.

It was as if a natural disaster had taken place. People walked around the lobby in a fog. The bar opened and people started drinking and talking. Did you see that? The audience could not control themselves. People were amazed. I, on the other hand, had no idea that this didn’t happen every day. Almost never, I soon found out.

About forty minutes into the intermission, the lights in the lobby started to flicker and everyone returned to their seats. The announcer once again came over the loud speaker. Due to an accident the dancers cannot continue; instead, we will start the entire ballet over with the lead cast — Mr. Baryshnikov and Ms. Kirkland.

Let me tell you, it was a shame that you ever saw anybody else try to dance. I’d never seen real dancers leap into the air and fly before. It was beautiful. The crowd went wild. People started crying. They clapped and rose from their seats whenever Mikhail came on stage. And when it came to the peasant scene, everyone held their breaths. The ballerina was thrown into the air and it was as though she never landed. The audience gave the dancers standing ovations several times. They brought flowers to the stage and people talked about the evening as they walked out.

Several weeks later I read an article in People Magazine, describing the entire evening. But it didn’t quite capture the event. So now I go to the ballet as often as I can, but not for the dancing. Instead, I go for the same reason people go to NASCAR. The crashes in turn number three.

*Anthony Quinones lives in Miami Beach with his wife, Shellie. Together they own Aventura Invitations, a stationery company. He is currently working on several screen plays and a children’s book.

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More great TYTT stories:

The Pedestrian, part I by Crosby

The Pedestrian, part II by Crosby

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I woke to my friend Anna poking me repeatedly in the ribs. “We’re here! We’re here!” she shouted, her blond hair whipping back and forth with excitement as she tried to look out both sides of the bus at once.

The winter South African sun shone weakly through the window I had been resting against. The rest of the bus was beginning to stir as our classmates stashed their iPods and books and reached for the matching navy-blue windbreakers we had been instructed to wear at all times. We filed out one by one and waited patiently for our guide, Mr. Brown, to instruct us on what to do next.

Mr. Brown was dressed in his usually uniform of high socks, cargo shorts, fanny pack, and safari hat. He looked the part of a stereotypical tourist, except he knew everything about everything, and had traveled all over the world. Standing in front of the 112 Washington D.C. high school students, members of the National Cathedral School Chorale, he addressed us in an accent befitting an Oxford professor.

“This,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect, “is Cape Agulhas.” In the next fifteen minutes, we learned more than we ever wanted to know about Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of South Africa and the entire continent. It is often confused with Cape Hope, which many “naïve and uneducated people erroneously assume is the southernmost tip of Africa.”

“From the lookout point,” Mr. Brown concluded, “you can see both oceans at once. The Atlantic to your right and the Indian to your left.”

We advanced towards the start of the half-mile trail that would lead us down to the shoreline. There was a restaurant and gift shop at which Mr. Brown allowed a five-minute break. Anna and I waited outside. We gazed off into space, still tired from the bus ride and not yet adjusted to the six-hour time difference.

Then, through my glazed, half-open eyes, I saw a dark shape resembling a motorcycle approaching from the other end of the parking lot. It appeared to have two giant wheels and was barreling down the line of parked cars. Suddenly I realized with terrifying clarity that it was not a motorcycle; it was a giant baboon. And it was running straight at Anna and me.

Mr. Brown had warned us briefly about baboon attacks at the start of one of our many bus rides. Most of us had listened skeptically as he explained that baboons usually attacked humans who threatened their territory, or were eating aromatic foods.

“In the event of such an encounter,” he had advised us, “surrender your food to the animal and back away slowly.”

Fear gripped my body and random thoughts now flashed through my head. “Oh my God, I’m going to die. I will be torn to pieces by a creature half my height. What would the newspapers say? ‘Schoolgirl mauled by angry baboon on choir trip gone awry.’ Then again…if I have to die, why not like this? Eaten by a giant baboon. My classmates would tell the story for years.  But I don’t want to die, even memorably. I’ll just run away. Why aren’t my feet moving? WHY AREN’T MY FEET MOVING?”

The baboon was now barely an arm’s length away. I closed my eyes, waiting to feel claws on my skin, or fists in my stomach, or whatever sorts of things one feels when attacked by a large African primate. But I felt nothing. I opened my eyes and saw that the baboon had decided to spare me. Instead, he had veered towards the restaurant. He stopped just outside the door, raised his gigantic fists, and pounded against the glass. The noise was deafening, and the glass seemed to bend beneath his knuckles. We watched in horror as the baboon attempted to break down the door with his bare hands.

When the pounding finally stopped, there was dead silence. The baboon stood motionless, as if contemplating the impact his tantrum had had on petrified tourists and wait staff. Then the baboon lowered his arms and took off the way he had come, back across the parking lot.

From behind me, in a barely audible whisper, came the response of our well-traveled Mr. Brown: “Holy shit.”

*Gabi DiMarco is a student at Duke University. Contact her at gid2@duke.edu.

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More cool TYTT stories:

Rosa by Anonymous

Sleeping With Grandma by Kristi DeMeester

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It was two days before Christmas, and I was visiting my cousin’s home the night SHE came over. The lights on the Christmas tree were twinkling like stars in a country sky and cookie crumbs and empty milk glasses line the coffee table. Everyone was jolly, really into the spirit of things. Not me, no, I had retreated to my cousin’s room where I climbed into a bed, blared the sound on the TV, and hid. Outside in that living room was the girl that I had a major, major crush on.

I was sixteen, weighed about two hundred and ninety pounds and had never kissed a girl. She was seventeen, had short brown hair, and braces that glimmered when she smiled. Love since the first time I saw her. Her brother was in my scout troop, and was also on my cousin’s football team. That’s how we met. What would bring her to this house, on this holiday? Why did she have to make me sweat, and shiver, and feel like doing what the catechism teacher referred to as impure? Her parents had gone out of town, to a bed and breakfast, so naturally, she wound up somewhere near me. No matter, I kept in the bedroom while the night passed on.

After the movies were over, and the cocoa ran dry, the house grew quiet. My cousin had settled into his bed, and I was still in mine. All the girls, because I had about four female cousins there too, were in the other room where she was. It looked as if I had survived the night.

Then, the door creaked, and the pitch black of the hall melded with the dark of the room. Her squeaky, beautiful voice called out. “Can I sleep in here, it’s too crowded in the next room?” Right away, I leaped from my bed, and offered her my place. She worried. Where would I sleep? The floor was fine for me.

Over the course of the next, I don’t know, two minutes, I sweated off about fifty pounds in nervousness. She started talking to me across the couple of feet that separated us, playing word games, giving me letters and asking me to guess what it was she was trying to say. K,S,S,I – I couldn’t sort out the letters. S,S,K,I – I still didn’t get it. KISS, I got it! My God, she wanted me to kiss her.

Over on his bed, my cousin was wide awake, pretending to be asleep, but I could feel his eyes cutting through the dark. Who cares, this was the moment, this was… well… at sixteen, one can boast and pretend many things while in drafting class, or while eating Frito pie in the cafeteria, but when you are one on one with a girl, that’s where experience counts.

Rising up to her bed, which was my bed, the hard breathing began. I thought it would be a moment to last forever. Instead, she forced her tongue down my throat! Her braces pounced against my teeth, and I felt the cold metal on my tongue. How would I ever know that my first kiss would be a French kiss? Not one of those little romantic pecks that twelve-year-olds give over cotton candy at a church carnival, no. This was serious.

I slipped, my belly jiggling, and I fell to the floor. She followed, and landed right on top of me. We rolled around for what seemed to be hours, until my cousin stepped off the bed to get a snack. He was exhausted from all the excitement, and needed a break. In that little time we were alone, I was ready. This was it. Who needs virginity? Then, she rose over me, and whispered. “I have to,” took a deep breath, “I have to stop, I know when I need to stop.” My cousin came in with a bag of chips crinkling between his fingers. She went back up onto the bed and rolled over without a word. I couldn’t sleep. The three of us had a secret.

When she woke up, it was officially Christmas Eve. My gift had already arrived and … God damn, I was head over heels in love. All my shyness, and weird hiding from her was over now. There was snow outside, and the sun shimmered through melted icy windows onto her white gown when she got out of bed and stepped over me without a word.

For two weeks, I did not get a chance to see her, but my emotions kept reeling inside. It wasn’t until school started back up that I got a glance of her. Clearly I can see the square, dark halls as she ducked away in a crowd and disappeared. Not just once, but every time I would approach her. We never connected, and every time I got near, I would find her hanging on some guy’s arm.

Finally, I had a chance to take her aside. I told her how much loved her. Many times since I’ve seen it, but she was the first girl to sit and shake her head “no,” staring into space while I talked. The beautiful dream admitted to the dreamer that she didn’t love me. She just wanted my tongue.

_________

*This story originally appeared in “Journeys,” (Quesdilla Press 2004) a collection of nonfiction stories by the Telling Tales Theatre, organized by Norma Fain Pratt.

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More terrific TYTT stories:

Me and Stan Getz by Jonathan Bellman

The Great American Award by Vicente Lagunas

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The elevator carries me up toward the top of Seattle’s tallest building and lets me out on the 45^th floor. I stroll down a corridor lined with art work, push open the heavy oak door at Adams & Associates, and step into a room filled with cubicles and blaring phones. Behind the marble-topped reception desk I see stressed-out people in business suits scurrying about.

I’m relieved that I’ve worn my charcoal suit with pinstripes. When interviewing, I always try to match my surroundings. But for a for-profit school run by a temp agency, I had no idea how to dress. I went high end and got it right.

A receptionist greets me with false enthusiasm. I follow her clacking high heels into a spotless office. Tall, leather-backed chairs surround an antique mahogany desk. Through the ceiling-to-floor windows I see the shipyard cranes far south of downtown.

I hear my name and spin around to see a petite woman dressed in an Ann Taylor outfit, her hair coiffed to perfection. It’s Kimberley, the owner. We shake hands and grab our seats.

The first stage of any interview is always a strange dance of snap judgments and feigned excitement, where each person tries to gauge the other’s worthiness — like meeting your teenage daughter’s boyfriend for the first time. But I’m well matched for a job teaching computer software to adults.

Kimberley’s school is a startup teaching software applications and basic computer practices like email and web-searches. It will be a subsidiary of the main staffing business. Its customers will be “nontraditional” students: daytime workers who need a night class; seniors learning computing; unemployed workers retraining. Many will be learning computer apps for temp jobs they get through Adams & Associates.

If this job works out, it will be the second time I’ve worked for a private training school. My first involved teaching computer applications to low-income people in South Seattle who were seeking jobs as secretaries, bookkeepers, etc. Many were hoping to escape difficult backgrounds or bad relationships. The school was expensive to attend, but students were encouraged to get federal loans which, they were told, they could easily pay off when they found work.

I had no idea at the time how easy it was set up a private college or how poorly regulated they tended to be. My employer turned out to be a cut-rate operator who used ancient computers, older software, and outdated curriculum. Unwittingly, I became part of a predatory scheme where people, often recruited at Welfare offices or Unemployment bureaus, ended up with few skills but plenty of debt. I left the school soon after a salesman complained to me that he was being pushed to scare students into signing up for our program (“If you don’t enroll here, you’ll end up having no future.”). A year after I slunk away in shame, a group of unemployed graduates and former teachers launched a class action lawsuit. The feds started investigating student loan fraud and the company shut down.

I’m expecting better results here. Kimberley seems like a sharp operator. She got my name right when we shook hands, unlike the interviewer at the last school, who was holding a half-eaten doughnut in his other hand when we first met. And Kimberley’s plans for her new school sound solid.

We finish up the interview.

“Where do you think the school will be a year from now?” Kimberley asks.

“Right where it’s located now?” I say.

* * * *

SIX MONTHS LATER (In the South Seattle branch)

Pam bursts into the classroom shortly after our team meeting is slated to begin. Her frizzy hair bounces above her face, which is marred by deep, workaholic wrinkles and baggy eyes. The Staffing Specialists scurry to their cubicles and start calling companies eager to shed labor costs by hiring temps. Pam is the company’s #2, just in from downtown. No one wants anything getting back to Kimberley. People summoned to headquarters rarely return. Everyone remembers Jake, our last office manager, who ended up in the Anchorage office, dispatched to our northern gulag with little advance notice.

Pam is like a cross between Vladimir Putin and an ashtray. I can smell her cigarette stench from ten feet away.

The meeting begins with an update from the Sales team. In addition to her many duties downtown, Pam also oversees the sales force at the school. She listens to the feeble results and shakes her head. The two salespeople shift uncomfortably.

Pam glances at her watch, lurches out of her chair, and marches over to the whiteboard. After drawing two intersecting circles she starts motivating, Tony Robbins style. We sit and nod silently. The core concept of the lecture is “synergy”: multiple bodies working together yield better results than each body operating independently. Like honeybees. Like co-workers with far greater concerns nodding their heads in silent despair.

When the meeting ends I stroll to the restroom, thinking that we didn’t address the IT roll out. We’re starting a computer networking program next month, and the equipment issues are pressing. We don’t have servers, and Pam thinks we can just use regular computers, which “look the same but cost less.”

As I re-enter the classroom Pam says, “Let’s do lunch.”

Pam and I drive the one block to Sanfords, which is tucked between a Jiffy Lube and an Arby’s. We settle into a padded booth near the back.

Pam fires up a skinny cigarette and takes a sustained drag. A moment later she blows out a stream of smoke, exhaling dragon style.

I try making small talk by asking Pam what she has planned for the weekend. Pam flashes a wicked grin. Her pointy, sharp teeth are dark yellow, almost black in places.

“I have to go to the office in Anchorage…I hate Anchorage, especially in the winter.”

A waiter arrives. Pam orders the popcorn shrimp. I get the roast beef sandwich.

Pam takes a power drag on her cigarette, turns her head sideway, and blows an ash-plume of smoke over her shoulder. Then she turns back and says, “So what’s this about Kurt needing computers?”

Kurt, who is the school’s IT chief, has been pushing Pam to get the equipment we need. Schools can charge students a lot more for an IT program than a basic computer program, since the jobs (like Network Systems Engineer) that students get after graduating are higher-skilled and pay quite well. But the equipment and teachers needed to do the training right is expensive, which violates Pam’s cost cutting and profit maximizing desires. Basically, Pam wants to charge students a lot and train them on the cheap. She and Kurt have now stopped talking, so I‘ve become the go-between.

“Well,” I reply, “Kurt needs actual servers to do the lessons.”

Pam stubs out her cigarette and quickly lights a second as a Rod Stewart song starts playing, something about Rod “feeling sexy.” I’m losing my appetite.

Pam asks, “Can’t he just go get one at that place?”

“Yeah, technically, but they’re expensive. I know I wouldn’t want to shell out $1,200.”

“That place” is Circuit City, where Kurt buys equipment with his own credit card, submits a receipt to headquarters, and then waits to get reimbursed, which takes months. Apart from Kurt’s outstanding credit card bill, our school doesn’t have its own budget.

Our food arrives. Pam waves a hand and says, “Go ahead, start…its okay.” She keeps working her cigarette while I fiddle with my water glass, buying time. I can’t start eating until the butt is out. It’s like having a picnic near the tailpipe of a running car.

Pam crushes out the butt, stabs a shrimp with her fork and moves it towards her open mouth. I feel like I’m watching a shark feed. I turn away.

* * * *

The school is silent when I return. And empty. I only see Jerry, the Staffing Specialist who places temps into jobs at warehouses and factories.

Jerry looks up from his cubicle.

“I have no idea what’s up,” he says, “but at least it’s quiet for a change.”

I step into the classroom, boot up the computers, and then check the afternoon’s student roster. It’s nearly empty. A moment later two students arrive and settle into their work stations. I stare past them into the empty main room. But it’s strange, everyone being gone at the same time. Even Carol, the office manager, is gone.

Pam blows into the office while barking into a cell phone pressed against her ear. She shouts at Jerry for about a minute and then jogs down the aisle to Carol’s desk.

I head for the coffee room. Jerry sees me and strolls into the coffee room ahead of me. Meanwhile, Pam is scowling at a computer monitor and swearing.

“Did you know about this?” Jerry says.

“About what?” I respond.

Jerry laughs, puts his hands on his hips and shakes his head.

“Everyone bailed at the same time. Even Carol. Pam just found out from Kimberley. I’ve seen some strange stuff before, but this takes the cake. This place is fucked.”

I stare at Jerry. I’m no stranger to turnover, but this is like Jonestown.

Jerry grabs a coffee cup from the counter.

“Pam’s on Carol’s computer trying to find the client information.”

“Okay Jerry,” I say, “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

“Well,” he says, “Kimberly’s mom came out of retirement, got the Staffing Specialists down here to come along, and opened up a temp shop of her own. With Kimberely’s clients.”

I stare at Jerry in disbelief.

I’d only met Kimberley’s mom once, on the day before our school officially opened. We had a small celebration in a dingy banquet room at a nearby hotel and Kimberley’s mom dropped by for the occasion. She’d been retired for a year, having spent the previous forty building the temp-staffing business up from scratch before handing it off to her daughter. It was hard to tell whether or not she approved of Kimberly attaching a computer school to the original business, since she said little and mostly sat in a corner smoking skinny cigarettes that smelled like burning garbage. She was a grizzled, tough-looking senior who rose from humble origins in rural eastern Oregon to build the largest staffing business in the city. During four decades of constant work, I imagine she’d had little time to develop other interests that could keep her going as a retiree. The lady was stone cold and unnerving to be around, like the Grim Reaper. But why a mother would do this to her own daughter we never knew.

I wonder silently what it means for the school. And my job.

“Pam and Kimberely are calling the client companies, trying to get them back.” Jerry walks towards the door while I try to picture the mayhem that must be raging at headquarters.

* * * *

Over the next few months emails arrive exhorting the staff to “remain patient during this difficult period.” Kimberly battles her mother with lawyers while our office chews through a string of managers. Each is quickly crushed by the demands of team building and fake optimism in the face of reality. The occasional employee from headquarters visits our office bearing tales of employee departure, much the way a retreating soldier would relate grim tales of mass desertion on the front. Kurt quits and takes his credit card with him. The IT program is abandoned, saving potential students thousands of squandered dollars.

With Pam engaged in 24/7 crisis-management at headquarters, I’m saved from further power-lunches at Sanfords. Six months later the main company implodes and the school dies along with it. Students scatter to other schools to try their luck at the next educational company. It’s unlikely we’ll be missed.

*Thomas Sullivan’s first story for TYTT was Little Road Warrior: A Tale in Driver’s Ed in July. Living in Seattle,  Sullivan is the author of Life In The Slow Lane (Uncial Press), a memoir about teaching driver education in Oregon. Visit his website at http://thomassullivanhumor.com. He welcomes your comments at tmpsull@gmail.com.

Photo credits:  Thomas Sullivan, and djayo and igoghost — stock.xchng

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