by J. R. Helton
* * *
One day his mother did die. He’d told me so much about her I felt I knew her, too. He walked into an elevator lobby where I was painting a ceiling.
“Well, man, it finally happened.”
“What’s that, Steve?”
“She died yesterday.”
“Who died?”
“My mother.”
I stopped painting. “I’m sorry, Steve. That’s terrible.”
“She was really suffering. The cancer was eating her up inside. She’d been in severe pain for months, so she was heavily sedated when she died. I was there in the room with her last night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“She’s gone.”
“Do you have any other family?”
“No.”
“You know, maybe you shouldn’t have come in to work today.”
“What else am I gonna do? This is it. You want to have lunch with me at the Red Bean? I’ll pay.”
“No, I’ll pay.”
“That’s all right, let me pay.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll come back up here at eleven.”
He looked down at the ground and walked away, and I went back to painting my ceiling.
* * *
Tim Wilson, the big wheel at Austin Paint and Spray, was heavily involved in his small Holy Roller church and tried to be a father figure to all the guys. He had a local evangelical preacher who was also his friend who had started a half-ass church in a foreclosed two-story clapboard falling-down house he’d bought for nothing, not far from our paint shop in a shitty North Austin residential neighborhood. I knew him as Mr. Robertson, and he drove a long, four-door 1977 Lincoln Continental Town Car that was the same yellow color he dyed his hair. He always wore a shiny black suit with a wide red tie. Tim had several of his painters do free work for Mr. Robertson. Some had painted his large home, others had fixed up and painted the interior and exterior of the clapboard house Mr. Robertson had turned into a church, the inside all white, the outside lemon yellow.
One day Tim suddenly pulled me and another painter, a long-haired-loser-hillbilly-racist named Ricky, away from painting the One American Center building and had us follow him in his big white new Ford Econoline van to the yellow church, where Mr. Robertson was waiting, standing there in his suit, leaning against the gigantic Lincoln Continental, his arms crossed. I had started smoking small amounts of marijuana every morning before work to make it to lunch, and then took another hit off a joint after lunch to make it to 5:00 p.m. I had smoked weed for years, and it was easy for me to maintain. I wasn’t getting totally wasted, just a couple of hits a day were enough to allow me to barely escape some of the mundane, repetitive reality of my job as a painter, so I always had a joint in my wallet now.
I didn’t know Tim was taking us to his church, and I had just smoked a roach as we pulled up to Mr. Robertson. I was feeling paranoid when I got out of my battered LTD. Robertson was staring at me with disdain, but when the obviously-always-blasted, red-eyed Ricky got out of his old car, the yellow-haired preacher shook his head in disgust. He smiled, though, when Tim Wilson stepped out of the white van and shook his hand. Tim was hiking up his clean white pants on his fat ass, tucking in his white long-sleeve shirt, and talking rapidly. He seemed shy and nervous in front of his preacher, and it was interesting to see Tim in this new way, out of his element, out of the shop, kissing his preacher’s butt. They spoke as though Ricky and I weren’t there, and I listened and realized we were there because Mr. Robertson had installed a large concrete trough as a baptismal pool in the interior of his church, on the main stage, off to the side and behind his large cheap veneer pulpit. It looked like a long rectangular gray concrete hot tub he’d embedded into the stage with steps on both sides for his parishioners to walk down into in a line for him to dunk under the water and then walk up and out, like cattle being dipped for ticks.
Tim started ordering Ricky and me around, and we unloaded his van. I was disappointed to see it was full of several gallons, many cans, of A+B Blue poisonous epoxy. I was pissed that I didn’t have a respirator on me either. Ricky and I would have to work quickly, and we did, mixing the epoxy paint resin together into five-gallon metal buckets, laying out long dropcloths carefully on the church stage. We climbed down inside the concrete baptismal trough and painted it from the top down with big four-inch brushes and rollers. Mr. Robertson was pissing me off also, standing over Ricky and me, watching our every move, ordering us around, repeatedly telling me to not get one drop of the blue paint on any pew or surface of his church. Thankfully the toxic fumes finally got to him, and he left us alone, speeding off and away in his yellow Lincoln.
Tim stayed, though, his first words to us as his pastor took off: “Hurry the fuck up, Ricky! Jake, I want this done already. I want this done now, immediately. This is costing me money.” We did as told, rolled out the bottom of the concrete trough last so it would now all be sealed to be filled later with water that would appear clear and blue. We cleaned everything up, loaded the materials back into Tim’s van, and got the hell out of there, Tim telling Ricky and me both to make it a quick drive-through fast-food lunch somewhere and to haul ass back down to OAC and get to work texturing and painting the miles of walls inside the multistory building.
* * *
Tim thought of himself as a good guy, and he probably did have a slightly above-average IQ. He loaned his workers, his men, money for personal problems (at 25 percent interest) or bailed them out of jail. He was convinced that most of his employees were trying to screw him out of money on their time cards, and most of us were. He had two gangly, messed-up teenage boys and all three of them fought regularly. We had to pull him off his oldest son one morning before he knocked the kid out. His temper flared often, and he put chairs through walls, overturned bookshelves, gave us no Christmas bonus, and then pouted out loud when no one in his company bought him a present. He had one answer to any money question you might have posed: “You’re lucky you have a job,” which in most cases was probably true.
One day Jesse decided to kick methadone, which was, he said, fucking up his life worse than it was already. He came into the shop that morning looking very ill. He always had that thick-skinned, yellow junky pallor anyway, but now it was worse. His face was almost green, he could barely keep his eyes open, and he slurred his words.
We were sitting in the smoke-filled shop reading the morning paper. I glanced at the classifieds for other jobs and found no hope there. I thought of Susan in her cubicle at the Austin Times-Tribune, sitting there on the phone all day, taking down every one of those ads, counting out every character to calculate each ad’s cost. Tim Wilson had the front page, and he made a suggestion for solving the riot problems that were going on in South Africa at that time.
“What they should do is dig a big giant ditch and line all the niggers up in front of it. Then machine-gun them into the ditch, pour lime on them, and bury them.”
Several guys laughed and agreed. Tim noticed Jesse propping himself up by the door.
“Jesse! What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
“I told you, Tim. I’m trying to kick ’done. Don’t you remember anything?”
“Shit, Jesse, you look like you’re gonna die.”
“I am dying. I can feel myself dying.”
Everybody stared at him. A tape-and-floater said, “You look like shit, man.”
“I feel like hammered shit.”
“Maybe you better go walk around,” Tim said.
“Okay.”
Jesse limped out of the shop. I followed him into the parking lot. He leaned against a car and slowly slid to the ground. He pulled a bottle of pills out of his pocket and took three.
“What’s that?”
“Percodan. It’s what Justice Rehnquist takes, good stuff.” He exhaled heavily. “I’m having trouble breathing. These things aren’t worth a shit. I think I took about twenty of them yesterday.”
“Give me a few.�
�
“Fuck you, I need these. Here.”
I held out my hand, and he shook five yellow pills into it. I took one and put the rest into a piece of folded paper in my wallet.
“Jesse, you’re green.”
“This is ridiculous. What am I trying to do?”
“You need to go home.”
“Fuck that. I need the money. I gotta work.”
He put his head in his hands. The men started filing out of the shop, getting in their crappy cars to go to the job sites. Jesse had bought Susan and me dinner a few weeks before at the Hyde Park Bar and Grill. He’d been very funny and tried to pick up our Polish waitress by faking a Polish accent and saying he taught “retarded kids” crafts in Santa Fe.
“Thanks again for dinner the other night.”
“My pleasure. You kids’re great. I wish you success. I’m going to crawl under this car and die now. First I’m gonna drink the oil through the manifold.”
Tim waddled out to us. His gut seemed to grow larger every month. When he reached us he dropped his pen and had to struggle to bend over and pick it up.
“Jesse,” he said, “you need to go home.”
“No, I can work.”
“You’re useless to me like this. Why did you even come in?”
“Because I need the work and I can do it, so just give me a place to go.”
“Get out of here. You’re pathetic.”
“I’m trying to kick a powerful drug. Something you’d know nothing about.”
“Listen, your drug problem’s not my problem. I’ve put up with your drug bullshit long enough. Steve!”
Steve slowly shuffled up in his dark glasses and dirty Chicago Cubs cap. “Yeah?”
Tim pointed to me. “You guys go down to OAC. I want you to finish the seventeenth floor today. You’ve been down there for six fucking months, and you’ve only finished five floors.”
“That’s because you don’t give me enough help.”
“I don’t want to hear any more bullshit excuses. You’re fucking off and I know it. I’ve seen you guys walking around drunk on the streets. I want to see that job finished.”
“I’m sick of this shit,” Steve said. “I’m going to quit and you’ll be fucked ’cuz you won’t have one dependable foreman left since I’m the only stupid-son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t sleep in closets half the day.”
“So quit, goddammit!”
“Shit,” Steve said and walked off toward his truck.
Tim turned back to Jesse. “Get the fuck out of here, Jesse. You’re not dying in my parking lot.”
Jesse slowly raised his head and tried to stand up. He fell down, and I helped him to his feet.
“Listen to me,” Jesse began, “you stupid fat tub of shit. You talk about how religious you are, but you’re a hypocrite.”
Tim became incensed. “I got more religion in my little finger than you have in your entire body!”
“You wouldn’t know God if he bit you on the ass.”
“Get out of here! Now! Or I’ll call the cops!”
Jesse stumbled over to his van. “That’s okay, fine. I want to thank all my coworkers here for sticking up for me. I’ll be back.” He got in the van, started it, ran over the curb, and drove away, swerving all over the road.
Tim stared at me. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
“Nothing.”
I got in my car and followed Steve to OAC.
* * *
A few days later Jesse did return. He was back on methadone and much improved. I was talking to him in the parking lot before he went into the shop. I don’t know who called the police, probably Tim. Whoever it was, they suddenly drove up in force. Two blue-and-whites and one unmarked sedan.
Jesse and I stood very still. A chubby guy in a brown suit jumped out of the unmarked car, a gun in his hand, and ran toward both of us. Jesse looked at me and calmly said, “I guess I’m going back to jail.”
The man in the suit looked very intense. He shoved me out of the way and threw Jesse against his van. All the painters and Tim came out of the shop. The man handcuffed Jesse, who yelled, “Thank you very much, Tim! I knew I could trust you! God loves you, man!”
I walked over to the shop. “What happened?” Steve asked.
“Jesse was wanted,” Big Jim explained. “He’s going back to the pen.”
I asked him, “What for?”
Big Jim shrugged. “Something about fully automatic machine-guns, selling ’em.”
They pushed Jesse into the car. I looked at the flashing lights and saw Jesse in the back seat talking to the policemen in the front seat. A cop walked up and talked to Tim.
“Go back in the shop,” Tim said to us.
We followed his orders and went back inside the tin building.
* * *
Tyler, the banjo man, was another painter Tim now felt he’d carried too long. One morning Tyler came in ten minutes late. Tim started yelling at him, “You’re gonna get docked, goddammit!”
“Listen, you fat bastard, I’m sick of your shit. I had some problems last night with Becky.”
“You’ve always got problems with some woman. You’ve always got problems, period.”
“You’re a nosy bastard,” Tyler said.
“And you’re a drunk. I’m sick of covering for you.”
“Fine, I’ll quit and collect unemployment on your ass.”
“The fuck you will, you won’t collect shit. You’re worthless, Tyler. You need to get your shit together and grow up.”
“Listen, you ain’t my daddy! I’m a man, goddammit! You don’t tell me what to do. I got in a mean fight with Becky. I accidentally slapped her, and she left me for this guy with no nuts and I tried to kill myself, so there!”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Look, goddammit, that’s why I’m late!” Tyler held out his arms. Both his wrists had tape and bandages on them. “You don’t believe me? Look!” He ripped off one of the bandages and revealed two long red cuts with black stitches running vertically down his wrist.
“You’ve got psychological problems or something, Tyler, and I’m sorry about that. But you need to keep it at home,” Tim said. “That shit doesn’t belong up here.”
“Fuck you. I don’t know why I stay with you. Go ahead, fire me. I’ll collect unemployment.”
“I’m not gonna fire you yet, but you’re gone for the day.”
“Bullshit, I’m working today.”
“You’re going home.”
“Well, shit, that’s fine with me.”
Tyler stormed out of the shop and slammed the door.
“Fucking retard,” Tim said.
Everyone laughed a little and then started swapping mythical settlement yarns. I read my paper silently, in the corner, something about President Reagan opening up the state mental institutions and letting out the patients onto the streets, and calling them “homeless.”
* * *
I made efforts not to associate with my fellow painters after work. It was bad enough seeing them forty hours a week. On Friday evenings everyone stayed up at the shop and drank for hours and talked, not wanting to go home, or having no home. I usually had a beer, bummed a cigarette, and left. I didn’t want friends or any crap like that. But Tyler told me his problems more than anyone else, so I guess we were friends. His girlfriend, Becky, sparked yet another suicide attempt, and he went beyond work one afternoon and showed up at my apartment. Susan was spending the night with Norma, snorting crank and making crafts, bracelets and necklaces, well into the night, and so I was alone, sitting at our fold-out kitchen table, reading a book and eating a sandwich. I heard a weak knock.
“Come in.”
Nothing happened. Another weak knock.
“Come in!”
Tyler walked in, and he had tears in his eyes. “Hey, man, I’m sorry I came by—”
“Hey, Tyler, what are you doing?”
“They got my dawg. They got Merle.”
“Sit do
wn. Who’s ‘they’?”
Tyler slowly sat down on my couch. He put his shaking head in his shaking hands. “They took Merle.”
“Who took him?”
“I think it was that bitch Becky. I came home and he was off his chain. He ain’t showed up yet.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I’ve been in jail all night. Tim sent one of his boys down to bail me out. He said he’s gonna fire me.”
“Why were you in jail?”
“I’ll tell ya. I went over to where Becky’s been livin’ since she moved out. She’s livin’ with this guy with no nuts, he’s got this disease or somethin’, an’ so I went over there an’ I was just talkin’ with her out in the yard an’ No-Nuts calls the cops an’ they told me t’ leave an’ said I was drunk—”
“Were you?”
“Well, yeah. I had a bottle of whiskey in my coat. So, I left an’ then I come back an’ all I wanted to do was talk an’ I felt I had a right to have at least one conversation, just an explanation. I told her she owed me half for three months of the electric bill an’ that they was gonna cut it off. See, No-Nuts has some money an’ she does too, an’ all I told her I wanted was half and she said, ‘Tyler, I’m callin’ the cops,’ an’ so I said, ‘Fuck it,’ an’ I just sat down on the curb and finished that bottle. Two cops came up an’ they was a nigger an’ a Mexican, an’ the Mexican starts talkin’ t’ me like I was a little kid. He says, ‘Dammit, Tyler, we’re not gonna tell you again. You gotta leave this woman alone or you’re goin’ in.’ An’ I said, ‘I’m a man, goddammit, the hell I’m goin’ in.’ So they handcuffed my ass, an’ Becky starts cryin’ an’ sayin’, ‘I’m sorry, Tyler, I didn’t want ’em to take you to jail,’ and No-Nuts is out there with his bald leukemia head yellin’ at me now, sayin’ he’s gonna press charges, an’ I turned around t’ him an’ I said, ‘Listen, Charlie, I’m comin’ back over here tomorrow an’ I’m gonna cut off your head, tie a rock around your feet, an’ sink you in the Colorado River!’ An’ that nigger cop popped the shit outta me, hit me right in the face, hit me hard, an’ he said, ‘Don’t you say one more word or I’ll take the stick to your ass!’ I can’t remember anything else. I musta fought like hell last night. I got bruises all over me, an’ there was five, big, black motherfuckers standin’ there when they let me out this mornin’.”