The Long Haul

by Finn Murphy

  “You’re late.”

  “It was a challenge getting up the hill.”

  “We expected you at eight.”

  “Yes. We’ll make up the time.”

  “You can’t make up time. That’s nonsense. What do you know about time? When it’s passed you can’t get it back.”

  “I know a little bit about time, sir. It’s time to unload.”

  The Vaughans spent the day doing more video and criticizing all of our work. They filed a damage claim a few weeks later for over twenty grand. I’ll cop to a ding on their dining room table . . . and the dirt on the broom. Other than that the claim was bogus. But the van line paid it. I was debited my deductible of $1,600.

  Just when a jaundiced view of humanity was about to infect my soul with cynicism and resentment, fate dealt me the opposite hand to mess yet again with my worldview. The contrasts I regularly deal with would be so much more fun if I could just learn to roll with them more effectively. I’m getting better, but obviously, the challenge is rolling with the hard ones. The easy ones are similar in that the shipper accepts the instant intimacy, and our shared humanity is acknowledged. When that happens we can actually have a relationship, short-lived as it might be, but no less authentic for that.

  That’s when this came through:

  Shipper Dewan Bronx New York to Colorado City Arizona 22,000 lbs 2,416 miles Line haul $21,000 Pack and load COD Extra stop at origin.

  It was a full load paying over twenty grand, plus a full pack worth maybe five grand. Packing Monday/Tuesday, loading Wednesday, unloading Monday. That’s a one-week turn grossing fifteen grand, of which I’d pocket ten after expenses. Ten thousand a week has a nice ring to it.

  I arrived at the Dewan residence in the heart of the Bronx at 8 a.m. after an early start from Oxford, Connecticut. The Dewan house was in the middle of a teeming block of identical working-class row houses. Fortunately I’d only brought a small pack van for the day’s packing. I was going to have to call the New York City traffic department and get the cars off the street for Wednesday’s loading day. My 53-foot trailer would completely block the road if I stayed out on the street. Also I was going to have to hire an extra guy to sit in the truck. In neighborhoods like this you can’t just let an open moving van sit there. It would be stripped in five minutes. (I learned this the hard way in Boston when I was unloading on Commonwealth Avenue, in a decent neighborhood, and a guy ran up the walkboard, grabbed a bicycle off the tier, and rode away. I was standing on the ladder inside the truck at the time and watched the whole thing happen. The sheer nerve was astounding. By the time I’d gotten over my shock and went to chase him he was long gone. So now I have a guy who just stays on the truck looking mean. It works but it’s expensive. (What I need is a scarecrow that looks like a mover.)

  I walked up the stoop steps to the metal-barred storm door and rang the doorbell. It was answered by a small, middle-aged Bengali man.

  “Good morning, Dr. Dewan. My name is Finn Murphy from Joyce Van Lines. I’m your driver. Here’s my card. This is Tommy and Jeff. We’ll be helping you move over the next few days.”

  He beamed at us with owlish eyes. “Good morning, Finn and Tommy and Jeff. My name is Nobel. Please come in and meet my family. This is my wife Ranya and my infant son Rafik. We are all very pleased to meet you. This is a great day in our lives. We’ve been working toward this for ten years. We are all happy to meet you and have you share in our joy. Will you have some coffee? We serve real Arabian coffee in this house. I think you will like it.”

  “Why, thank you, Doctor. I think we will join you. We can go over some details then as well.”

  “Most excellent! Thank you. Ranya? Coffee, please. Please sit down, all of you. Let’s have a chat.”

  Now there’s a nice way to greet your movers. Arabian coffee in the living room with a charming man who remembered all our names. Ranya brought in the coffee on a tray with a pot, cups, and saucers and served each of us with a shy smile, asking if we wanted cream and sugar. I felt like I was having high tea at the Plaza.

  After pouring, Ranya disappeared, and Dr. Dewan started in.

  “Let me tell you why we’re so happy to see you. I was born in Bangladesh and received my MBBS in Dhaka. It’s a good medical degree but different from the American one. I moved here ten years ago and spent five years driving a taxi while qualifying for my American MD in obstetrics. For the past five years I’ve had a private practice here in the Bronx. We’ve done well here, but it’s too crowded and noisy. Compared to Dhaka, of course, the Bronx is like an open meadow, but it’s still too much. We always wanted to live out west. We saved our money, worked hard, and now we’re off. I think you have the extra stop listed on your paperwork? The extra stop is my office. We’ll be moving all my medical equipment from there also.”

  “That’s a great success story, Doctor. Congratulations,” I replied. “I’m happy for you and your family. How did you come to pick Arizona?”

  “Thank you, Finn. I can see you are happy for us, and that makes me happy too. I picked Arizona because my job is to deliver babies. Lots of babies. The more babies the better. I’m good at it. When we started seriously thinking about moving, we looked for places with lots of babies being born without a lot of doctors. It came down to Amish country or Mormon country. We picked the Mormons.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because most of the Amish live in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. There are pockets everywhere. Sarasota, Florida, has a population; so does Wyoming. But I needed a larger community, and I wanted to be out west.”

  “What are the Mormons going to think about a Muslim doctor from Bangladesh delivering their babies?”

  “I wondered about that too. I went out there several times and spoke to people in Colorado City about that very issue. Everyone was thrilled. There are not enough doctors out there, especially ob-gyns, and they have lots of babies. Have you ever spent any time with Mormons?”

  “I’ve moved lots of Mormons. Corporate America loves them.”

  “Do you have a general opinion about them?”

  “I have. Every Mormon family I’ve moved has been pleasant and low-keyed. We’re always fed and treated nicely. On the other hand, they have lots of stuff. Tons of food in the basement, toys everywhere, and multiple bedrooms for all the kids.”

  “Pleasant and low-keyed. Exactly. We’ll be fine. I bought a beautiful house out there for less than this row house here. Eight bedrooms on ten acres. I’m going to be a cowboy. More coffee?”

  “No thanks. We need to get to work. This has been very nice. Thanks again.”

  We spent the day packing cartons. I was intrigued by this situation in a couple of ways. First, 22,000 pounds is a lot of stuff for a family with one kid. That mystery was solved when we went into the basement. It was all medical equipment. Examining tables, file cabinets, machines, scales, boxes full of gloves, bandages, everything. The good doctor must have been haunting medical-supply yard sales for years. The other thing was their courage and determination. My own family came from Ireland, and they moved into the Irish ghetto in New York and went to the Irish churches and hung around with other Irish. Coming to America was probably a challenge, but they kept to their social networks, so the culture shock had to have been somewhat muted. These folks were from a far different cultural mileu than any Irish peasant and going it alone out in the Wild West. Reminds me of some of the Chinese. You can go into the furthest reaches of, say, Montana or northwest Ontario and find some little dusty town with a hitching post and a church, and there will be the Chinese restaurant. Inside will be a family with the man in the kitchen, the wife serving tables, and the kids doing homework 500 miles from the next-nearest Chinese person. It takes brass balls to do that. I couldn’t, for sure.

  We worked until five, and I took the pack van to my mother’s house in Connecticut. My mom cooked me a steak, and after dinner I looked up Colorado City, Arizona. It was a Mormon town, all right. In fact, it’s ground zero f
or the plural marriage set. The doc was right; lots of babies. I woke up in the middle of the night, and that’s when the penny dropped. I couldn’t wait to talk to Nobel the next day.

  We started day two with coffee again. Ranya had diffidently asked us not to pack the coffee set until the very end. There we were, in the living room, sitting on the sofa, and I put it to the doc straight up. “Say, Dr. Dewan, I looked up Colorado City last night. You’re right, they have lots of babies there. Apparently the reason for that is that lots of the guys out there have lots of wives. I suppose you knew that.”

  “Yes, I knew that.” A smile began pushing at the corners of his mouth.

  “And you bought a house with eight bedrooms for you and Ranya and Rafik?”

  “I did.” His smile was getting broader.

  “I’ll be damned. You’re planning on starting a little dynasty out there, aren’t you? When do your wives start coming in from Dhaka?”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” He was beaming at me. “Do you disapprove?”

  “I have no dog in the hunt one way or another. I’m just amazed at the brilliance and audacity of the plan.”

  “Yes. It will work. We will hide in plain sight among the FLDS. They really are thrilled about us coming because they do need doctors. They’re patient people. They probably envision a bunch of brown Mormons in a generation or two. That could happen. Of course, Muslims can be patient people too. Inshallah.”

  I started laughing. Ranya blushed. Dr. Dewan turned his face back to me, grinning from ear to ear, pinning me with those sparkling, merry eyes.

  “More coffee, Finn?”

  Chapter 9

  INVISIBLE MEN

  My first year back on the road was mostly a fun adventure. For the first month I had my nephew with me, which helped a lot. He had been a mover during his college days and was between jobs. My first load was a nice one for Bechtel Corp. out of Tampa for Hanford, Washington. Bechtel had received a $10 billion contract to stop a plume of radioactive groundwater from reaching the Columbia River. My shipper was an engineer on the project. From Hanford, I picked up another full load in Seattle for Los Angeles. I’d gotten my mountain-driving chops back after successfully navigating Deadman Pass (aka Cabbage) into Pendleton, Oregon, Snoqualmie Pass into Seattle, and Tejon Pass (Grapevine) into Los Angeles. I’m more comfortable with mountain driving these days, but I’ve no desire to drive in the ice and snow ever again.

  Mountain driving isn’t difficult exactly. If you’re calm and willing to go slow, it’s reasonably safe. The problem for me is that while I’m going 25 mph down a 6 percent grade I have a lot of leisure to think about what could go wrong and then imagine ensuing repercussions. It comes down to what you’re used to. I know guys that will scoff at Vail Pass but turn into burbling babies at the thought of New York. My first day driving a tractor trailer had me over the Third Avenue Bridge into Manhattan and it hardly fazed me. Of course I was a very young idiot at the time. I still drive into Manhattan, and I’m always respectful, but it doesn’t freeze me like it would some driver from Wyoming who’ll do a 10-mile 6 percent while singing Willie Nelson on his CB, talking to his girlfriend on his hands-free, and heating up a burrito in his microwave.

  I got a General Electric exec back to Fairfield, Connecticut. The pace was calmer than the North American days, or maybe I was more relaxed. I kept my logbook strictly legal, hired lots of help for my shipments, and stayed in motels almost every night. All I was doing was VIP pack and loads, and the emphasis was totally on customer service and not quick turns. That suited me just fine. The money was amazing, and my account at Joyce Van Lines swelled nicely in spite of the expenses. It costs me about $25,000 a month to operate full-time out on the road. The lion’s share of that is labor and fuel.

  I picked up an ex-investment banker with his $3 million worth of loot going to Aspen. My regulars, Julio and Carlos, and another helper I use regularly, named Eduardo, drove out from Denver, so I had my A-team crew. My shipper, after helping topple his bank in 2008, caught another plum job with another troubled public company that was paying for this move. Without getting all Eugene Debs about it, it seems to me that while many bad movers end up in orange vests picking up trash on roadsides, many bad executives get new million-dollar jobs running other companies into the courtroom.

  I rolled into Aspen and parked at the Bavarian Motel. I had called previously to ask if they could accommodate my truck, and the desk clerk said he’d arrange it. He also told me the trucker rate was $149 a night, a huge bargain for Aspen. I booked one room for me and one for the lumpers. When I pulled up next to the motel I saw a hundred-foot row of orange road cones the desk clerk had put out to save the spaces for me. I was snug on South Mill Street in downtown Aspen with a tractor-trailer right across the street from the Grand Hyatt. Unbelievable.

  The boys met me in the lobby about 8 p.m., and we ordered a pizza. They asked to talk to the delivery guy in person, saying that they had to give him directions. They negotiated a pickup of a twelve-pack of Coronas with him and sat by the pool smoking cigarettes until he arrived. I grabbed a slice and a Corona and went to my room to fill out my logbook and go to sleep.

  At 7 a.m. we headed out to the residence. We got through the security gate, found the shipper’s house, and prepared to unload. I knocked on the door, which was answered by a middle-aged Latina. She let me in and led me through the entryway into one of the living rooms, across the art gallery, and into the chef’s kitchen with the stainless Sub-Zero and the granite island (each stone no doubt manually shaped by Lake Como virgins using nail files). Fifty grand worth of copper pots that could have served lunch for the Army of the Potomac hung on hooks above the island. I won’t go into any further detail about what amenities a $25 million starter castle in Aspen has, except to mention the eight bedrooms, the eleven bathrooms, and the Olympic-size pool in the basement. It was an older house, maybe almost a decade old, so it was regrettably missing some key necessities for a twenty-first-century 1-percenter, i.e., the home theater, the wine cellar, and the Sonos Bluetooth sound system. I stood there at the kitchen entrance for a few moments and watched my shipper in a deep huddle with a woman and another man. The shipper was a short man with graying auburn hair, about forty-five years old. The woman, his new wife, was a statuesque blonde about thirty, and the other guy, the builder, was a tall slim man wearing a starched shirt with French cuffs. They were talking wine cellars. I stood there a while longer and then emitted a delicate Jeeves-like cough to announce my presence. The shipper, let’s call him Mr. Big, looked over at me and said to the builder guy, “I’ll be right back. I need to deal with this.”

  Mr. Big ambled over. I introduced myself, gave him my radiant road-driver smile, handed him my card, put out my hand to shake, and said we were here to move his stuff in.

  “OK,” he said, ignoring my hand. “I’m kind of busy. Consuelo can tell you where everything goes. Do you need anything from me?”

  “No sir. It will take us a bit of time to prep the house. We’ll cover the white carpets and pad the walls. Is there anything you need from me?”

  “I don’t think so. How long do you think you’ll be here?”

  “Well sir, there’s quite a bit of stuff and a lot of uncrating. We’ll be here until five or so.”

  “That long? Can’t you move faster?”

  “I’ve got my best crew in from Denver, sir. We won’t waste time, but we do like to do things properly, and properly will take us to five o’clock.”

  “Fine. Deal with Consuelo. By the way, if you’ll be here all day, will your guys need to use a bathroom?”

  “Probably, sir. The normal procedure is to designate a guest or staff bathroom for the crew. We have our own cleaning supplies, and we’ll make sure it’s shipshape before we leave.”

  “Well, that’s not going to work. You see, my wife—”

  “Sir, I have three handpicked men and myself. We do VIP corporate moves all the time. We’ll be respec
tful, but we are required to answer the call of nature.”

  “Can’t you go down to the security shed?”

  “Well, I suppose we could, but that would mean moving the truck two miles each time. That will take the job into tomorrow.”

  “Tell you what. Across the street they’re putting in my tennis court. They have a portapotty there. Use that.”

  “Yes sir, we’ll use that.”

  “OK then. We’re done here.” He turned away to talk wine cellars, tennis courts, and home theater.

  We prepped the house and started unloading. In addition to a bunch of cartons and some rolled rugs, there were twenty-five crates holding eight 600-pound pieces of granite and seventeen art canvases. For VIP moves like this, we’re authorized to uncrate everything and set it where it’s supposed to go. We’ll do everything except hang pictures on the wall.

  We finished unloading around noon. We worked fine with Consuelo; she spoke no English, but both Julio and Eduardo speak Spanish. Eduardo grew up in Longmont, Colorado, but spent five years as a pimp in Juarez.

  At noontime, the shipper’s threesome disappeared. They returned an hour later with a bunch of bags from the deli downtown and proceeded to set up luncheon at the granite island. I eased into the kitchen to tell Mr. Big we’d completed unloading and would take a short break before commencing the uncrating. He took a long bite out of his hoagie and said, “Fine.” I looked at all the food bags, sort of waiting. We don’t expect to be fed by our shippers, but when the nearest deli is thirty minutes downvalley and I had spent twenty minutes backing my rig down the winding driveway, it would have been thoughtful to ask the movers if they wanted anything from town. Not Mr. Big. There would be no luncheon provided for the proles. I went back to the truck and told the boys we’d be skipping lunch. Eduardo looked at me and said, “Maybe it’s time to throw your white around.”