Pilgrims

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  house coolers of broccoli, and, sure enough, there was Hector, in

  the distributor’s shack. Every individual cooler was as big as a

  furniture warehouse, so every cooler needed a distributor. The

  distributor’s job was to handle the charts and lists showing how

  much produce was in each cooler and how much produce was

  going out with each order. It was a pretty good job. If you were

  good at math, of course, it was a lot easier. Jimmy Moran had

  actually been hired as a carrot distributor for a few months once,

  but his friends the dockworkers were always joking around with

  him and distracting him from doing the job right, so that job

  didn’t work out for Jimmy, and he ended up having to find a

  porter’s job on the docks again.

  Of course, the distributors worked on the docks, too. The

  only thing was, they got to work in little plywood shacks that

  looked like ice-fishing houses. The shacks had space heaters to

  fight the cold, and sometimes even had carpeting on the floor.

  Hector was in the shack studying his charts, and there was

  another guy beside him, eating a hamburger.

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  “Hector!” Jimmy said. “Look at Señor Hector the dis-

  tributor!”

  Hector shook Jimmy’s hand through the window of the dis-

  tributor’s shack. Centerfolds of nude black women hung on the

  wall behind him. Hector wasn’t even wearing a jacket in there,

  just a thin, cotton button-down shirt. A person could really stay

  warm in a distributor’s shack.

  “How are things?” Jimmy asked.

  “Not bad.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Ed. He’s from the office.”

  Ed and Jimmy shook hands.

  “So, what are you fellas doing over here?” Jimmy asked. “Put -

  ting broccoli in small boxes and labeling it twenty-five pounds?

  What is this, some kind of hoax?”

  Hector did not smile. Neither did Ed.

  “Listen, Hector, I’m kidding! Listen, I’m running for presi-

  dent of the local.”

  Jimmy slid two of his campaign buttons over to Hector.

  “There’s one button for each of you,” he said.

  Hector read his button aloud with his funny accent: “dicel-

  lo’s not on our side, so let’s put him on the outside.

  vote for jimmy moran, president.”

  “You running against DiCello? ” said the guy from the office

  named Ed.

  “That’s right.”

  Ed stared at Jimmy Moran for a long, long while. He chewed

  his hamburger in no particular hurry, swallowed, and said

  finally, “What are you trying to do?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Seriously. What are you trying to do? Get yourself killed?”

  “Oh, come on now.”

  “What do want? You want to wake up in the trunk of a car?

  Seriously.”

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  Jimmy Moran looked at Hector and shrugged comically.

  Hector didn’t smile, and Ed kept talking.

  “What do you want?” he said. “You want to have your legs

  cut off ?”

  “I’m not afraid of Joey DiCello,” Jimmy said. “And I sure

  hope you two old boys aren’t afraid of him.”

  “I sure the fuck am afraid of him,” Ed said.

  “Joey DiCello has no reason to pick on a good guy like me.

  What do you think — he’ll kill me and leave all my kids with

  no dad? Forget about it.”

  Ed slid the campaign button back through the window to

  Jimmy. “You can keep your button, friend.”

  “Vote for me, and things will really change around here.”

  Hector still said nothing, but Ed asked, “You got a wife?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You hate her so much you want to make her a widow?

  Seriously. Is that it?”

  “Well, I’m not fighting with y’all about it,” Jimmy said. “I

  don’t fight with people who don’t know what’s good for them.”

  Jimmy threw his sack of campaign buttons up over his shoul-

  der and walked on down the docks.

  “We vote for DiCello here!” Hector called after him. “We’re

  not stupid!”

  “The hell with you, then!” Jimmy called back cheerfully.

  Then Jimmy Moran stole a few beautiful Haitian mangos from

  a fruit display and dropped them into his jacket pocket. Jimmy

  had learned from Hispanics that Haitian mangos are the best

  for eating by hand, because their flesh is not stringy. Grafton’s

  didn’t usually have good fruit, but these were exceptional, gor-

  geous mangos, with minty green skins just turning a soft banana

  yellow. There were guys who had worked in the Bronx Terminal

  Vegetable Market for years and never tasted a fresh vegetable or

  fruit in their lives. It was sad, really. These were guys who would

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  all die of heart attacks at fifty because they ate beef and bacon

  every day instead of the fruits and vegetables that were all over

  the place. Consider Hector’s friend Ed, for example, sitting in

  front of a warehouse full of broccoli, eating hamburgers. A heart attack waiting to happen.

  Jimmy Moran, on the other hand, ate everything, because he

  was in love with vegetables. His mother had always raised beau-

  tiful vegetables, and he would eat anything. He used to work as

  a crate stacker in a big cooler full of fresh herbs, and he would

  even eat parsley in bunches. He ate radishes and cauliflowers

  like they were apples. He would even take a small artichoke,

  peel off the tough outer leaves, and eat the rest of the artichoke

  whole and raw. He ate more vegetables than a hippie. People

  thought he was crazy.

  On this night, he walked out of Grafton Brothers, eating

  Haitian mangos the Puerto Rican way. First, he massaged and

  squeezed the mango with his thumbs until the flesh was soft

  and pulpy beneath the skin. He worked the fruit with his

  thumbs until it had the consistency of jelly. Then he bit a small

  hole in the top and sucked out the insides. Sweet like coconut.

  Foreign-tasting, but nice.

  In the next hours, Jimmy Moran campaigned through the

  wholesale houses of Dulrooney’s, Evangelisti & Sons, DeRosa

  Importers, and E & M Wholesalers. He introduced himself to

  all the workers and made small talk with them. He talked to

  one poor fool who’d just spent his whole life’s savings on a

  greyhound dog, and to another guy whose teenage daughter

  had cancer, and to a lucky son of a gun who was going on

  vacation to Bermuda. He talked to a whole lot of guys who told

  him he must be crazy to run for president against a mobbed-up

  animal like Joseph D. DiCello.

  As he walked, he ate a handful of baby zucchini he’d stolen

  off a display at Evangelisti & Sons. Each zucchini was no

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  longer than his littlest finger and tenderly flavorful in the sort of salty way that a big squash would never be. These were delicious

  raw, and the
only kind of squash that didn’t need any dip or

  sauce to have a flavor. Baby zucchinis were rare for the season,

  and expensive. He’d filled his pockets over at Evangelisti &

  Sons. A delicacy. He ate through them like they were peanuts.

  At 4 a.m., he reached the bottom of his sack of campaign

  buttons. He was at a small, brand-new specialty gourmet house

  called Bella Foods, a place known to be very exclusive, which

  sold to the best restaurants in New York. He didn’t think he

  would know anybody there at all, until he saw his old friend

  Casper Denni. They talked for a while about Jimmy’s campaign

  and about their families. Casper also had a whole bunch of kids

  and an Italian wife. Casper had also been a porter for many

  years.

  “Now, what happened? You had some kind of accident, I

  heard?” Casper said.

  “The whole town’s talkin’,” Jimmy said. “Back surgery, buddy.

  What are you, a distributor now or something?”

  Casper was sitting in a neat little white-painted booth, drink-

  ing a cup of coffee.

  “No way,” Casper said. “I got me a little business, selling

  coffee and replacement wheels for hand trucks.”

  “What?” Jimmy laughed.

  “I’m serious, Jimmy. It’s great.”

  “Get out of here.”

  “Check it out. Here’s the idea. There are how many hand

  trucks at the market?”

  “Hundreds. Millions.”

  “Thousands, Jimmy. Thousands. And every one of them a

  cheap piece of shit, as everybody knows. But every porter needs

  a hand truck, right? Because how many crates can one man

  carry alone?”

  “Get out of here, Casper.”

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  “One crate, right? Even a big monster like you, in your prime,

  you could only carry two crates, right? But with a hand truck,

  you can carry — what? — ten crates? Twelve crates, maybe? A

  hand truck is a very important tool, Mr. Moran, for the eco-

  nomic success of the individual.”

  “Excuse me, Casper? Excuse me, buddy, but who are you

  talking to here?”

  “So, Mr. Moran, it’s the middle of the night and your shitty

  hand truck pops a wheel. What do you do?”

  “Find some other fool’s hand truck and steal it.”

  “And get your head beat in? That’s the old-fashioned way.

  Now you can just come to me. For five dollars, I sell you a new

  wheel. You give me another five dollars for a deposit on a

  hammer and wrench, which you get back when I get the tools

  back. Then I sell you a ten-cent cup of coffee for a buck, and I

  make six bucks out of the deal, and you have your hand truck

  fixed.”

  “Who would do that?”

  “Everybody, Jimmy. Everybody comes to me now.”

  “In the last four months this happened?”

  “I’m telling you, Jimmy. It’s great. Tax-free. No union.”

  “You’re something else, Casper. I tell you. You’re really some-

  thing else.”

  “You get to be old fucks like us, you need a new idea.”

  “I got an idea,” Jimmy said, laughing. “I got a new idea. You

  make me your partner, buddy.”

  Casper laughed, too, and punched Jimmy in the arm.

  “Listen,” he said, “you ever work around this outfit before?”

  “Around this place? No.”

  “You ever seen the mushroom man?”

  “Casper,” Jimmy said, “I don’t know what you’re talking

  about, buddy.”

  “You never saw the mushroom man? Oh, that’s great. Oh,

  you gotta check this out, Jimmy. I can’t believe you never heard

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  about this guy. You want crazy? You want to see crazy? You just

  gotta check this guy out.”

  Casper came out from his neat little booth and led Jimmy

  into a huge refrigerated cooler warehouse.

  “You’re gonna love this guy, Jimmy.”

  They walked back to the end of the warehouse, and Casper

  stopped at a wide doorway, covered with the thick strips of

  plastic that keep temperatures even. A small refrigerated room.

  Casper pulled back a few of the plastic strips and stepped inside.

  He waved Jimmy to follow him, grinning like it would be a

  bordello in there.

  Once inside, Jimmy Moran was faced with simply the finest

  mushroom produce he had ever seen in his life.

  “Look at this booty, Jimmy,” said Casper. “Have a look at this

  produce.”

  The crates were piled neatly, no higher than five to a stack,

  and the top crate of each stack was open for display. Right by

  the door was an open crate of snowy white button mushrooms,

  bigger than plums. There were crates of glossy shitake mush-

  rooms, crates of shiny yellow straw mushrooms, and fresh por-

  cini mushrooms that looked valuable enough to serve at God’s

  table. Jimmy saw crates of portobellos as fleshy and thick as

  sirloin fillets. He saw a crate of wild black mushrooms, tiny and

  feathery like gills. He saw a crate of the kind of woody mush-

  rooms his mother used to call toadstools, and also a crate of

  mushrooms that looked exactly like cauliflower heads. There

  were morels in the shapes and shades of coral. He saw a crate

  full of the tan, shelf-shaped mushrooms that grow out of rotting

  tree stumps. There were crates filled with Chinese mushrooms

  he could not name and other crates were filled with red- and

  blue-spotted mushrooms that may have been poisonous. The

  entire room smelled like damp manure, like the soil in a root

  cellar under a barn.

  Jimmy Moran reached for a portobello mushroom, the big-

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  gest one he’d ever seen. He wanted it so much, but just as his

  hand touched it he heard a growl like an animal’s. A huge and

  ugly man in overalls and a brown wool stocking cap was coming

  at him, exactly like a big dog.

  Jimmy jumped back, startled, and Casper shoved him hard

  and shouted, “Get out! Get out!” Jimmy stumbled and fell

  backward out of the room, panicked. He fell through the plastic

  sheeting and landed hard on the concrete floor of the ware-

  house. Casper jumped out of the room after him, laughing and

  laughing.

  Jimmy lay on his back on the cold floor and Casper said,

  “You’re safe out here, Jimmy boy. Old mushroom man never

  comes out of there. Christ, what a crazy fucker. Don’t touch the

  mushrooms, Jimmy. I should’ve told you don’t touch the god-

  damn mushrooms unless you have permission.”

  On the floor, Jimmy tried to sit up, but his back spasmed, so

  he lay there for some time, willing his back to relax. Casper

  offered him a hand and Jimmy shook his head to refuse it.

  “You okay, friend?” Casper said.

  Jimmy nodded.

  “Shit, you probably hurt your back. I forgot about your god-

  damn back. Jesus, I’m sorry.”

  Jimmy nodded again.

  “That’s a crazy fucker in there,” Casper said, a
nd again of-

  fered Jimmy his hand. Jimmy took it this time and very gingerly

  stood up. Casper parted the plastic strips and said, “Just look in

  there at that fucker.”

  Jimmy shook his head. He found that he was breathing very

  carefully.

  “Come on. You don’t have to go in there. Just look at that huge guy. He won’t touch you if you leave the mushrooms alone.

  You got to take a good look at that guy.”

  Casper continued to insist, so Jimmy finally did poke his

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  head into the refrigerated mushroom room cautiously. The man

  in the room was indeed huge, and he stood quietly in the center.

  He was wearing brown overalls and he had a long brown beard.

  His feet were placed apart and his hands hung loosely fisted.

  Jimmy Moran and the mushroom man looked at each other.

  And while the man did not growl again, and while the man did

  not make any kind of a move forward, Jimmy Moran withdrew

  his head very slowly and stepped away from the door. He and

  Casper walked back to Casper’s booth in the hallway.

  Once they were out, Casper said, “The best mushrooms in

  the whole goddamn market.”

  Jimmy sat down on a crate next to Casper’s booth and shut

  his eyes. His back was stiff. Sitting didn’t help, so he stood

  again.

  “The owner hired that crazy fucker a few months ago,” Cas-

  per explained. “The guy used to be a trucker. He’s from some-

  where like Texas, or nobody knows where. They’ve got some

  kind of an arrangement, him and the owners. The guy never

  leaves the room. I sit here night after night, Jimmy, and I’m

  telling you, that crazy fucker never leaves the room. Those

  mushrooms, Jimmy, are honestly the best goddamn mushrooms

  you will ever see. The owners used to have a problem with

  people stealing the mushrooms, see.”

  “Jesus.”

  “No more problems with stealing anymore. I’ll tell you that

  goddamn much. You plan on stealing these mushrooms, you

  gotta wrestle the big fella first.”

  “You have aspirin?” Jimmy asked.

  “No, but I’ll give you a cup of coffee, you pathetic bastard.

  Now get out of here, Jimmy. Feel better. Good luck on your

  election, even though I think you’re a crazy bastard for running

  and I think somebody’s probably going to put a bullet in your

  neck for you pretty soon. Now take your coffee and get out of

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