Scratch Beginnings

by Adam Shepard

  “Ain’t nuttin’ like sleepin’ outside, lookin’ up ’er at the Big Dipper,” he told me.

  To each his own, I suppose.

  Yeah, there was plenty of excitement to keep me occupied, but all I needed to keep my mind at peace was Fast Company. No matter what happened or what kind of stress I encountered, it was important that I went to work every morning with a smile on my face and a hop in my step, which wasn’t that difficult to do. While it surely wasn’t easy to get amped up about hauling dressers and boxes around all day, I was energized by the idea that my time as a mover, however long it may be, was finite. Every day led me one more step in the right direction, and that was right where I wanted to be.

  TEN

  ADVENTURES IN MOVING

  Thursday, August 10

  By day four of my new job, I had already been assigned a permanent partner to work with. I had my very own crew.

  Shaun Caldwell was atypical of most of the movers at Fast Company and unquestionably my exact opposite. He was thirty-nine years old, short, loud-mouthed, cocky, and very much a control freak. When he walked, he strutted from side to side and swung his arms back and forth—a walk that made you wonder as he approached you how much money you owed him or what you may have done lately to cross him. But, while he meant business in everything he did, he was also very likable and enjoyable to talk to. Some of the guys at the shop questioned his late-night habits, but they all loved socializing with him in the office in the morning before we would go out on a move.

  And his driver had very conveniently resigned on Wednesday, just two days after my start at Fast Company.

  The first thing we would do every morning around 8:00 on our way to the move (and the habit that kept many people from wanting to work with him) was stop by the gas station around the corner for his “spinach.” With his spinach, he was juiced up, his senses were magnified, and he could move anything. But without it, he was cranky and irritable and difficult to be around. His spinach cost $1.09 (times two or three on most days) and came in twenty-four-ounce cans with the words “Natural Light” printed on the outside. After we made the stop, he would hop back in the truck, crack open the top, and proclaim, every time, “Come to papa!” Every day. I would drive, he would drink, and together we would move furniture with such speed that it appeared that we had somewhere more important to be. It was a ritual we established early on.

  And I didn’t mind. How could I? As long as he was pulling his own weight, I didn’t care what he was doing. I did mention once or twice that it was incredible that he could drink beer and still be capable of being such a beast, but all he could say was that he was so used to it that it didn’t phase him anymore. Besides, by his own admission, he wasn’t even one of the better movers at the company. Among the history of Fast Company that he would offer from time to time, he told me who the big dogs at the company were: “JB, Jody, Mike, Derrick. Dem da beasts uh da company. Can’t nobody move like dem.”

  As impressed as I was with Shaun’s strength and efficiency, I could only imagine what it would be like to work with one of those other four guys—guys who would pick up a sofa, throw it on their back, and carry it to the front door, and then come back out for the next piece. I was hoping that one day I would get the chance to see them in action, but it was a long shot. Even with “the heart of a lion,” it was enough of a challenge for me to carry my end of a washing machine with Shaun, so how was I ever going to be respectable enough to go on a move with those guys?

  In the meantime, Shaun was teaching me the ropes, how to use the box dolly, the four-wheeler, and “Big Red” to my advantage, saving my back from lifting every piece. He also taught me Fast Company’s unique way of wrapping furniture. Most other moving companies carried the piece out and wrapped a pad around it on the truck, but not us. All leather and wood and any other piece that was scratchable or breakable was covered with a pad and then shrink wrapped to the piece. Shrink wrap, in all of its universal glory, has infinite uses. In addition to using it for wrapping furniture, we were using it to keep our pants up, as door handles on the truck, and to keep the side view mirrors from blowing in the wind when a bolt fell off. We could use it for anything. It was miraculous. It’s the new duct tape. Sometimes, though, shrink-wrapping the furniture was just as hard, if not harder, than carrying the piece out the door. We would have these big, industrial-sized rolls of shrink wrap that we would wind around every crevice of the piece, a dizzying chore, ensuring that the pad stayed on until we ripped the shrink wrap off at the customer’s new house. While it was somewhat time consuming, it was well worth the additional minute spent per piece as it made the piece easier to transport, and it made it easier for us to stack in the truck. And the customers felt more comfortable knowing that we weren’t going to scratch their furniture. There was plenty more damage that we could do (like tripping and dropping mirrors or crashing into walls), but scratching the furniture was something that we were able to avoid.

  The differences between Shaun and I positively worked in our favor every day, in every way. He would come into the office and demand that we be put on the better moves. With his aggressive style, we would find ourselves heading to Mount Pleasant (the posh area east of the Cooper River) nearly every day. If we weren’t on a good move, then he would talk to Curtis or his boss, Jill, and get it switched. “Naw, naw. This here ain’t gonna work, boss lady. We’ll take that one, though,” he would say. Best of all, he wouldn’t back down until he was satisfied. We were always in the shop at least a half hour before all of the other small timers, so we pretty much got the pick of any small job that we wanted. By the time they got there, we would be long gone. The guys that really cared in the first place were going out on bigger moves anyway and didn’t pay any attention to Shaun and me.

  Our differences also worked to our advantage on the moves. I was sociable and cordial, quizzing customers on where they were from, what they did for a living, and the like. For the most part, Shaun would steer clear of social interaction with the customers. He generally directed all of his energy my way, letting me know that my future as a mover looked bleak. Then, at the conclusion of the move, just as I would be settling the bill, he would march in and address the customer, saying something to the effect of, “So! Guess what time it is! It’s tippy tip time!” or “You know what a little birdie just told me? He told me that you’re the big-shot tipper around these parts.” Although it could sometimes be perceived as condescending or disrespectful (since a tip was supposed to be an added bonus and never expected), that was not his intention. He kept the mood light, and we were always grateful for the tips we received, whether it was $10 or $50, but I can only imagine that his added quips meant more dollars for us in the long run.

  In the early weeks, Shaun was enjoyable to work with. Although I never divulged the premise of my project, I felt comfortable enough to offer him bits of truth about where I had come from. Our contrasting backgrounds left us with plenty to talk about. My father received his MBA from George Washington University, worked as an economic developer for the North Carolina Department of Commerce, and taught me how to throw a curve ball. Shaun’s dad served the country in the armed forces and taught him how to kill a man with a toothbrush—not something that Shaun was particularly proud of, but a mastered skill nonetheless. I grew up playing sports and reading whatever I could get my hands on, while Shaun spent his younger years on the streets, fighting and hustling dope. I went to college. Shaun served a seven-year sentence at Sing-Sing in Ossining, New York, for manslaughter, a story that we revisited as often as he wanted to talk about it. It was a typical gangster story, like the ones you pay $9 to see at Carmike Cinemas.

  Shaun had been at a nightclub in New York, hanging out with a few friends. They were drinking and dancing and having a good time. One of the guys he was with was celebrating his birthday, so Shaun’s friend had ordered up the VIP treatment—corner booth, expensive champagne, and girls. Plenty of girls. Guys around the club started to get a little je
alous and came over to talk to them about it. A fight ensued, one of the guys pulled a knife, and Shaun was stabbed three times in his stomach area. One of the scars he showed me was at least three inches long on the side of his body. It was a miracle that he survived, he told me. He was laid up in the hospital for two months while doctors performed several surgeries. While he was out of commission, his brother asked around and found out who had stabbed Shaun and where he could be found. When Shaun got out of the hospital, he popped the guy who stabbed him.

  The State of New York evidently has aggressive plea bargain opportunities, and Shaun said the District Attorney also took it a little easy on him since he had been stabbed first. He was sentenced to ten years and served seven.

  But Shaun’s demeanor didn’t suggest he was a felon. Most of the other guys that I had met along the way and would meet in Charleston that had served hard time (many of whom were employed at Fast Company, since they didn’t do background checks or give drug tests) were much more humble than Shaun. They didn’t walk with their arms flailing about, and they certainly didn’t have the mouth that Shaun had. Prison had calmed them down, and, on this side of the gate, they were just happy to be alive and in the free world. Shaun, on the other hand, was invincible, just like I thought I was at the time, but he had a different way of showing it. It would complicate things between the two of us from time to time, like when I would get mad if he ordered me to go uptown to pick up his girlfriend after work, but for the most part we kept things light. Like the time I pulled the truck over to the side of the road after he threw one of his cans out the window.

  We had been working together for two weeks, and we were starting to be friends, so I didn’t have a problem confronting him about his constant littering. So there we were, sitting in the idle truck on the side of Remount Road one afternoon on our way back to the office.

  “What’r you doing?” he asked.

  “Look man, check this out. I gotta put my foot down here, bro. If you’re gonna be my ‘homeboy,’ ‘my patna,’ we’re gonna get a few things straight here.”

  He looked around as if he was on a hidden camera TV show. He wasn’t angry, but he was noticeably confused.

  “From now on,” I continued, “while you’re on my truck, there will be no more littering. Every time you throw something out the window, I don’t care where we are, I’m gonna pull over, and you’re going to go pick it up. And while I’m in the business of making demands, you’re gonna start buckling your seat belt, too. If you don’t like it, well, then it’s been nice workin’ with ya.”

  He laughed. He was loving my sudden bossiness. We sat there on the side of the road for a very long ten seconds before he realized that I was not joking around.

  “Wait. Are you serious? Are you friggin’ kiddin’ me? Who the hell are you? My mom?”

  Nope. I was his driver. And I wanted to keep it that way. I didn’t ask for much. Just two, simple, easy-to-follow demands. And he loved it. He knew that I wasn’t an obsessive environmentalist, but that there were four things that I believed in wholeheartedly: love, hard work, Carolina basketball, and putting your trash in a garbage can.

  As he got out of the truck to pick up his can off the ground, murmuring four-letter words my way with a smile on his face the whole time, I knew he was questioning what he had gotten himself into by working with me. Nonetheless, that man stopped littering, and he buckled his seatbelt whenever my truck was moving. It was great. I listened to and respected him, and he did the same in return. We both knew our place. I knew to keep my mouth shut and my ears open when it came to moving furniture, and he knew to bring a bag with him for all of his trash. We learned so much from each other, and we were making good money moving furniture in the process. It was turning out to be a great partnership, Shaun Caldwell and I.

  I was hitting a groove and really starting to see the light. I opened a bank account where I deposited my entire paycheck, which ranged from $160 to $250 a week during my first couple of months at Fast Company, depending upon how many hours Shaun and I worked. I also saved all of the money from working with George on Sundays and my tips from the moves as well. Occasionally I slipped by the Goodwill to buy extra shorts for work or Family Dollar to stock up on luxury items like shower slippers and Q-tips and dental floss. But I did my best to conserve my money. Cheap? Definitely. But that’s how I had to be. Every $5 and $10 I could save might not matter so much for that one day, but it would be so valuable in the long run.

  I also continued to donate plasma, since I wasn’t afraid of needles, and it was such easy money. I could sit there for an hour and read the paper (which was free in the mornings on the bus!) or a book I had checked out from the library and collect $30 in the meantime.

  My eating habits, at least during the day, did suffer quite a bit, though. Lacking the resources to prepare a healthy lunch, I was left snacking throughout the day on what had become my staple diet of peanut butter crackers and canned Vienna Sausage, which was just as appetizing as it sounds. Other days, when I hadn’t gone grocery shopping at Family Dollar or I simply needed a break from munching on the same food, I would spring for lunch at McDonald’s or Wendy’s or any other fast food joint that was convenient for Shaun and me, both in accessibility and price. For $5, I could fill up on the dollar value menu, but it didn’t do much to perk up my energy level or balance out my diet. At times, I felt like I could have been starring in Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me. Luckily, Shaun and I had already completed most of our moves by the time we stopped for lunch in the afternoon.

  After two weeks working at Fast Company, I took my paycheck stubs down to the Department of Social Services to apply for food stamps. Most of the guys who were living at the shelter that were unemployed or working cash jobs on the side were getting food stamps. At the time that I was living in the shelter, they were receiving $152 per month. After going through the rigorous application process, which included a thirty-minute meeting with an individually assigned Social Services caseworker, I was awarded $80 per month. My caseworker explained that the consideration for food stamps—similar to the consideration given with Medicare—was based on number of household members and income level. But even with a metabolism that burned food like a furnace, I could make $80 go a long way, especially after I moved out of the shelter.

  Life at the shelter remained lively despite the routine: get up, eat, go to work, check to see if my name was highlighted to work the next day, eat, return to the shelter, eat, socialize, shower, argue with some random guy about something ridiculous, and go to bed. My job at Fast Company offered the happy escape that I needed—to fraternize with so many different cultures and attitudes. As time dragged on, though, evenings at the shelter started to kill my mood. The longer I lived there, the more I realized what a downer it was to live that lifestyle, and I couldn’t wait for the next step in my life, whatever that would be.

  Beyond the fact that I was sleeping on a mattress on a floor with more than ninety other men and questioning higher powers as to when I could eat, shower, and wake up in the morning, there were certain things at the shelter that were difficult for me to adjust to. One of those was going to the bathroom. For my first forty-two days in the shelter, I didn’t squat on any one of those toilets. I just couldn’t do it. I could use the urinal, but other business was taken care of right before I entered the shelter or it was held—often, quite uncomfortably—until the next day. It was the only way. It was so humiliating, to me and probably to many of the other fellas, to sit down on a toilet in an open stall without a door to shield us from everybody that came into the bathroom. The one time that we were supposed to be able to sit back and relax, free from the anxieties and realities of our world, was now a communal event, and the mere thought made me very uncomfortable.

  But, I suppose, we adjust. And that’s what I was forced to do on day forty-two. Without volunteers to prepare dinner, Robert and a few other shelter inhabitants had whipped up a soon-to-be-infamous concoction of chipped beef with
shredded cheese and a side dish of green beans with gravy. It was delicious, no doubt, but the line started forming to use the toilets before everybody had even finished their evening meal. One guy even ate his meal in the bathroom line, knowing that it was going to go right through him. And there I was among them, defaulting on my vow that my cheeks would never touch the stained porcelain lavatories at Crisis Ministries.

  We adjust. That’s what we do. We seize the opportunities that are given to us, and we adjust to make up for what is kept from us. In some cases, and certainly in the case of the toilets on my forty-second day at the shelter, we don’t have a choice. We embrace change or we fight it off. In the end, they say, change makes us stronger. Even if we deny the change and retreat back to the norm, the experience has helped us to grow and understand what is on that other side, and it has given us the freedom to make more informed decisions in the future.

  But I didn’t retreat. My first experience using the open-stalled facilities at Crisis Ministries wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected, and it gave me the freedom to make the choice to come back and use those facilities or not. And I did. Every night. It wasn’t as serious of a predicament as I had anticipated, and it definitely wasn’t worth the risk of forming ulcers in my stomach if I continued to wait until the next day.

  So is it a stretch for me to compare my bathroom habits to life-changing moments? Nope. In fact, on so many levels, change applied to everything I was doing in my everyday life. If there was ever a time for me to embrace change, my time in the shelter was it. I had to make many adjustments if I wanted to get by and eventually get out of the state of poverty that I was in. I was making a complete overhaul in all aspects of my life, from my spending habits to my attitude to the way that I treated my peers. I wasn’t changing my personality or who I was. I was changing my outlook on life, and it was affording me the opportunity to really start to appreciate what I had the potential to accomplish in just 365 days.