Knucklehead & Other Stories

by W. Mark Giles

  Soupy was all fidgety-like again. Cleared his throat, said, “Yes, well Terri, aside from the hostility, I guess you’ve articulated one position.” He blew out so his cheeks puffed up. He was pale, except for a big red blotch on his forehead and another on his neck. “I don’t want hostility. Christ, not now.” Talking to himself.

  Stinky Bob had already backed out the door. “I’ll stay out here, Mr. Campbell.”

  “Well sure, I guess if you’re comfortable with that—”

  “In fact,” Bob said, “I’ll just go over to the loading dock and listen to you all on the intercom.”

  “You can do that?” Soupy looked around.

  “With the phone,” Tattoo Terri said. “This phone is set so you can access it to listen as an intercom-speaker from another line.”

  “Right,” said Soupy.

  “I do it all the time.” Stinky Bob was saying. “At coffee time. I mean I usually take coffee by myself, sometimes I like to hear people. Talking and stuff.” His own voice trailed off as he moved away.

  Soupy was having trouble with his smoke—my smoke. He’d already dropped it about three times, and finally crushed it with the toe of his shoe. He stared at the door after Bob, rubbed his palms together. The red blotch on his forehead had grown all the way back into his hairline. Suddenly Bob’s voice squeaked out from the speaker on the telephone on the wall behind Soupy. “Hi,” Bob said, and we all jumped.

  “You can hear me all right?” Soupy said, stooping over a bit to speak at the phone.

  “Loud and clear like always,” Bob said. “You don’t even have to stand that close. I can hear all the way across the room just fine.” I think all of us were racking our brains, trying to remember what we’d ever said to regret. Wondering if Stinky Bob had been listening. Lots of times Danny and I trashed everybody. Rose’s nose, Terri’s tattoos, Soupy’s bowties. Bob’s smell.

  Finally, Soupy came out and told us that Danny was dead. I’ll say this much for Soupy. He kept it simple for once. “I’ve got a tragic, unfortunate announcement. Daniel Weybourne died last night. In a car accident. Let us all take a few minutes to remember him. I’ll let everyone know details of the service as they become available. Let us remember him.” He left it at that. No speeches. No sermons. Soupy turned to face the wall. Bowed his head. Rubbed his face. I moved to the table and sat down, pulled out my smokes and gave one to Tattoo Terri without her asking. She cleared her throat and I thought she might say something. But she didn’t.

  About half the room started bawling. Rose with the Nose led the chorus. At first I thought the air conditioning had gone on the blink, a bad bearing or something. She was screeching really high but not too loud, with a kind of ka-chunk when she breathed in. I didn’t join in. I didn’t know enough to cry when I had the chance, back then.

  Tattoo Terri didn’t cry either. Not quite. I found myself staring at her, and she stared back. I could see tears welling up, how green her eyes were. Usually when I looked at her I just saw tattoos, but this time I saw her eyes. She broke off the stare. She ran her hand under her smock and rubbed her neck, barely moving the shirt collar enough to show a wing of butterfly over her collarbone. “Rose,” she called out. It was the first thing anybody had said. “Rose, cut it out.” Rose kept at it. “Rose!” Tattoo Terri was almost yelling. The cords on her neck stuck out.

  “Terri,” someone said. A small voice, coming from the speaker on the phone. Stinky Bob. “Terri,” Bob said. “Calm down. Be cool. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

  Terri jumped up, knocked the chair over. Grabbed the handset, screamed into the mouthpiece. “Shut up, Bob. He’s dead, Bob. Shut the fuck up.” Slammed the phone down, stormed out. She took her cigarette—my cigarette—with her. Technically, she could have been fired for that. Smoking in the warehouse outside the coffee room.

  Bob’s voice came out of the speaker. “Good-bye.” A click.

  We had to go back to work. We couldn’t stop working because Danny was dead. There were orders to fill, stock to be inventoried, deliveries to be dispatched. Cars and trucks kept breaking down out there, mechanics in garages phoned for parts, and we shipped ’em out. I spent the morning unloading trailers with Tattoo Terri. It was a job that I would usually do with Danny, or that Danny would do with Stinky Bob. Danny always drove the forklift. The forklift was Danny’s baby. He had even installed an 8-track. Liked to play Led Zep tapes or BTO. Strung a row of dingle balls along the roll cage, stuck a chipped plaster statue of the Virgin Mary to the dashboard with a knot of duct tape. That was Danny. He wasn’t even Catholic.

  I let Tattoo Terri take the forklift. She just got on and started off-loading pallets and I didn’t try to stop her. She was a good lift operator. We kept working right through coffee, Terri driving and me swamping, breaking down the loads, stacking loose crates on skids, arranging the stock by zone, double-checking the counts the receiver had signed for. Hardly said six words to each other, except maybe “This one,” or “Move that there.” No tunes.

  I was busting a nut and sweating hard, even though it was cool in the trailers, November and all. I snuck a quick sniff under my arm for B.O. thinking Terri was out on the dock. But she had got down from the lift and was right behind me. “He’s got some kind of problem with his glands,” she said.

  Startled, embarrassed, I spun around. “Huh? No, I was just—” What was I just doing? How do you say that?

  “Bob,” Terri said. “He’s got something with his glands or organs. It’s natural, he can’t help it.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I was thinking I didn’t smell too bad.

  We knocked off at five minutes to noon, made for the time clock. Most times at lunch, Danny and I would head across the street to the Dairy Queen. He’d grab a burger, fries and a shake. I’d eat the sandwiches my mom packed for me in waxed paper. We’d talk hockey, cars, music, girls. Maybe I’d pick up a banana split for dessert. Other times I’d just stay in the warehouse at lunch, read westerns or do crosswords. I liked the ones where you solved puzzles. Acrostics.

  Stinky Bob and Tattoo Terri went up the road to the Ti-Jaune Tavern lunchtime every day and I asked if I could go along. I didn’t much feel like going across the street by myself and didn’t want to hang around the warehouse either. The noon buzzer sounded and Terri clocked both her and Bob’s cards. “Hustle your ass, Walter,” she said, “we only got a half an hour.” I punched out and chased after her. Bob had ducked out early to fire up his rusted Datsun and was waiting at the door. Terri dove in the front and pulled the bucket forward and I scrambled in. Stinky Bob popped the clutch and we were moving before the door was closed. I got a noseful of the inside of the car and tried to hold my breath. It was like being inside a hockey sock that had never been washed.

  Terri hit the On button for the radio. A Bee Gees song. Over the music she called “Fag!” and stuck her hand between the front seats. At first I thought she meant Andy Gibb, then it registered. I figured what the hell and dished a cigarette out, stuck it between her fingers. It was the rose hand. Maybe the smoke would cut through Stinky Bob’s smell. The back window wouldn’t open. About ten pine trees dangled from the rearview.

  A five-minute ride—one light up 49th and across the tracks — Stinky Bob drove in less than three. Pulled up in the fire lane right outside the tavern entrance, just under the sign that said “No Parking—Towaway 24 Hours.” Tattoo Terri had the door open before the car lurched to a stop and so did Stinky Bob. I fiddled to find the lever that moved the seat forward. “Hey, I forgot my lunch,” I said. “Too bad,” Terri said. “Barley sandwiches for Walter,” Bob said. “Don’t bother to lock it.”

  At that time, I hadn’t been in too many beer parlours, and the Ti-Jaune looked like all the rest. Round tables with terry-cloth covers, battered chrome and vinyl chairs, jukebox, cigarette machine, pool table. Just as we sat down, a waitress plunked twelve glasses of draft beer on the table. “I think we’ll be needing another dozen, Mitzi,” Stink
y Bob said, and drank one down in a gulp.

  “Work up a thirst, eh,” Mitzi said. She balanced her empty tray on her hip.

  “Remembering the dead,” Bob answered, picking up another. Tattoo Terri raised a glass and tilted it towards Bob. “To Danny,” she said. She glanced sideways at me and gave a little nod. I grabbed a beer too and sipped.

  Mitzi shifted her weight again. “Five-forty.” Tattoo Terri and Stinky Bob drank. I fumbled in my pocket. Pulled out two twos, two fives. “Your round,” Terri said. I gave Mitzi seven. She shuffled four quarters from the change dispenser at her waist and slapped them on the table. Kept the other sixty cents for a tip without me telling her to. Terri and Bob were into their third beers and I was barely finished my first when Mitzi brought the next round. Terri opened her bag, counted out five ones, picked up a couple of quarters from the table. “Keep the change,” she said.

  “Yeah right,” Mitzi said. Folded the bills in half along the long edge, added them to a bunch already woven through her fingers. I looked at the clock. Already ten after twelve. “How we gonna drink all these?” I asked.

  “With great haste,” Stinky Bob said, and drained another glass. “Hurry up,” he said.

  “I gotta go talk to Steve,” Tattoo Terri said. She got up and took two fresh beers with her. Walked over to the pool table, talked to some guy. Biker type, black leather vest, black T, big wallet chained to his jeans dragging halfway down his ass. He gave Terri a cigarette, she gave him a beer.

  “Here’s to Danny,” I said. Toasted with Bob and drank the beer down in a swallow. Bob did the same. Mine backwashed a bit into my nose. Terri came and took the last quarters from the table. “Any requests?” she said. She went to the jukebox. The Stones, “Dead Flowers.”

  We’d never really had a conversation in the year I’d worked at the warehouse, so Stinky Bob and I sat without saying much. We watched guys shoot pool. Watched the television where a soap opera played without sound. Watched the hand on the clock sweep through the seconds over the cooler behind the bar. The clock’s face plastered with the logo of a beer that they didn’t make anymore. Watched Tattoo Terri move through the room. Talking to one, then another of the regulars. For about the thousandth time I wondered how many different tattoos she had, where they might be. I’d seen a half a dozen—the roses, the parrot, the butterfly, a mushroom on her shoulder, a vine around her ankle. What designs were on her breasts? Her back? Her butt? What might be engraved on the inside of her thighs, in the well of her navel?

  Stinky Bob hunched forward and drew me into the thick of his smell. He belched and the release of recently-consumed beer gases was refreshing. “Twenty-seven,” he said.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Terri,” he said. “Twenty-seven tattoos.”

  At first I wanted to ask him how he knew what I was thinking. Asked instead, “How do you know?” Bob didn’t answer, sucked another glass of draft. I persisted: “I mean, did you count them or something?” I could’ve kicked myself. I couldn’t lose the image of Stinky Bob in his green work shirt, counting tattoos on Terri’s naked body.

  Stinky Bob licked his upper lip real slow. I had an attack of the willies. I could feel the beer working on my empty stomach. Heat flushed my face. My trousers felt like they were full of pink fibreglass insulation. I squirmed. “What do you suppose?” he asked. The smell from Bob nauseated me. Each word oozed, dropped from his mouth like a fish flopping on the bottom of a boat. Flopping and bleeding and dying. Stinking. But it was me whose mouth moved like a fish. Opening and closing, no words.

  Stinky Bob laughed. A single “Hah!” full of beery bad breath. He dunked his fingers in a glass and flicked drops of beer in my face. “Snap out if it, Walter. Should I call a doctor?” Laughed again. “I didn’t count any of Terri’s tattoos. I asked her, same as you would.” I probably looked like I’d just eaten a hot pepper. Sweat beaded on my forehead. My eyes burned. I shook my head a little bit. Bob repeated, “I asked her, Walter. I asked Terri how many tattoos.” He went into a fit of laughing. Kind of a bark at the back of his throat, with a snort each time he breathed. It broke down into a series of sneezes. His laugh smelled like compost.

  I started to laugh along. The kind of half-laugh where you don’t really get the joke. I had to think about turning the corners of my mouth up. I hoisted a beer and drank. Tried to take it all in one pull. Stinky Bob blew his nose into a blue and white handkerchief, wiped at his eyes. “You’re quite something, Walter. Like a spring lamb you are.” He looked into his handkerchief, examined what was there. “Now Danny,” he went on. “He might have known more about those tattoos.” I coughed beer back into my glass and up my nose. Bob looked at me, grinning. “Of course if he did, he took his secrets with him. Eh, Wally?” I drank another beer, lit up a smoke. I hated it when anyone called me Wally.

  Tattoo Terri came back to the table and slid into her chair. “You guys look like you were having a time.” She reached for my cigarettes on the table. I covered her hand. “No,” I said. “No, no, no. For once buy your own goddamned smokes. I’m sick and tired of you mooching off me. Listening to ‘Walter can you bum me a fag,’ like I’m some queer. Get your own fucking fags.”

  Tattoo Terri pulled her hand from under mine. Held it close to her, like I’d hurt her or something, which I hadn’t. Then she relaxed. Regained her cool as always. “A little testy, are we?” Her voice was smooth as ice cream. She was mad, I could tell. The three of us looked at different things. Not each other. We waited in silence. Drank the last of the round.

  “Aw shit,” I said finally. “Have a cigarette. I hate it when a girl sulks.” I tossed the deck over to her. “Have the whole damn package. I quit.”

  Terri drew a smoke from the box, tapped it on her thumbnail a couple of times to tamp it. Stinky Bob waved Mitzi to bring more beer. “I’m hardly a girl, Walter. And I certainly never sulk,” Terri said. But she was smiling and I did too. Flipped her Zippo open and lit the cigarette. Handed the rest back to me.

  “No,” I said. “Keep ’em. I quit. This is my last one.” I blew a stream of smoke to a ceiling fan going around and around above my head.

  “Really,” Tattoo Terri said. “You quit. Just like that.”

  “Sure. Just like that. For Danny. Like a tribute to Danny. He hated smoking. I mean, he smoked like a chimney, but he was always trying to quit.” I felt kind of stupid saying this. But proud at the same time. I had a sudden urge to talk, to say anything about Danny. “You know,” I said. “Danny had nicknames for all you guys.” Stinky Bob drank. Tattoo Terri shrugged, took the pack of cigarettes and put them in her bag. “He did,” I went on. “For everybody. Rose with the Nose. Soupy Campbell. Fat Pat. Attilla the Hank.” I took the last drag off the last cigarette I would ever smoke. Dropped the butt in an empty glass.

  I looked at Terri. She looked back. “He called you Tattoo Terri. I mean, I guess, sure. What else would he call you, right?” I nodded to Bob. “And, well. He called you Stinky Bob. No offence. He just called you that. A nickname.” The two of them were smiling. Bob looked at the beer in his hand. Terri looked over at the pool table.

  Bob said, “He had a few for you too.”

  “Me?” I said.

  “He called you Wimpy Walter,” Terri said. “Or just Wimpy.”

  “Sometimes Wild Walter,” Bob said.

  “But usually Weird Wally,” Terri finished. Mitzi brought a dozen more beers. Bob paid, tipped her two bucks. It was twenty-six minutes after noon. “We’ll be late today,” Terri said.

  “To Danny,” Bob said. “Dead Danny.”

  “Dead Danny,” Terri said, raising a glass.

  “Dead Danny,” I said. We all drank.

  Industrial

  Accidents

  Four men sit in the lunchroom of a chemical plant.

  Andy has a pen in each hand. He is doing two crosswords at once. The newspaper he reads has two sets of clues for the same puzzle. With the right hand, blue ink, he answers the cryptic clu
es in the bottom right corners of the blanks. With the left, red, he answers the quick clues in the top left. He hopes one day to complete both simultaneously.

  Meanwhile, Jason struggles with a different puzzle in the tabloid daily. He asks, “What’s a six-letter word for pan-liner, starts with a T?” His grime-etched fingers are knotted around a pencil he’s sharpened with his knife.

  Asleep on a chair in the corner, Bruce makes a sound in his throat, not quite a snore.

  With a pocket screwdriver, Ditmar scrapes the leavings from his pipe onto the lunchroom table. He breaks up the cold dottle, separating the ash from bits of tobacco that are merely scorched. He brushes the ash to the floor, then scoots the rest into his tobacco pouch.

  “Teflon,” Andy says without looking up. Three puzzles at once, he thinks.

  “Teflon,” Ditmar repeats. “Teflon is a killer.”

  Jason puts the pencil behind his ear, opens his paper to the page with the photo of the bikini-clad Beauty Of The Day. Teflon thighs, he thinks. He uses an Exacto knife to cut out the picture. He folds it carefully, minding where the creases are, and tucks it into the breast pocket of his coveralls. Later, at the end of shift, he will add it to the stack of pictures in his locker clipped from the last two years’ of papers.

  “It’s true,” Ditmar continues. “Researchers at a chemical factory very much like this one. Trying to make a synthetic lubricant. They mixed some formula, it didn’t work.” Ditmar checks his watch.

  “Really,” Jason says. Andy scribbles on newsprint.

  Bruce dreams of trout.

  Ditmar pinches a clump of tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “Then they sat down to lunch, just as we are doing now.” A thin chain tethers a cigarette lighter to the leg of the lunchroom table. Ditmar pulls it towards him and clicks the flame to life. How sad, he thinks, as he does each time: a pipe should be lit with a wooden match. Regulations prevent him and all workers from bringing personal matches or lighters into the plant. “But one of them left it on the burner. A terrible oversight, or perhaps brilliant.”