Grayson's Knife

by Russell H Aborn

  Grayson says, “To keep you in suspense.”

  Grayson is still slow witted after only three hours of fitful sleep, looks at his card again and says, “Hey, be nice. Today’s my birthday.”

  “BFD,” Rosie says.

  “Birthday-fun-day?”

  “Is that why you look like hell? Again?” Rosie says. He takes some paperwork from the counter and straightens up. Another driver, Normand Frechette, an old Fall River Frenchman, comes out of the men’s room, drying his hands on a paper towel.

  “I’m twenty-two.”

  “Jeez. You look older than twenty-two. Don’t he, Normand?”

  Normand shrugs. Grayson sighs and looks up at the nicotine-stained panels on the dropped ceiling of the break room, his eye caught by the rapid flicker of a fluorescent tube in the recessed bank of lights.

  “Alright, already,” Rosie says. “Let’s get to work.”

  Through the glass door Grayson sees brother Hugh heading in to the conference room with the other salesmen, all of them clutching yellow pads on the off chance their boss says something that makes any sense, which they’ll write down to commemorate the date.

  Rosie hands Grayson a freight bill tucked into in a typed-out driver’s manifest. The freight bill is for the delivery of a trailer load of shirts to the new Jordan Marsh warehouse in North Quincy. Rosie then hands a manifest to Normand.

  “Procter and Gamble,” Rosie says to Normand.

  “What’s this?” Grayson says. “Jordan’s? Give this to Normand. Give me the soap. I like the exercise.” He turns to Normand. “Normand, I had this load before, it’s those tee shirts, from New Bedford. It’s all on pallets. You just have to cut the shrink wrap, then stand on the dock and make believe you’re counting. It’s ice cream, man.”

  Old Normand is about five-six, and so thin he’s damn near two dimensional. A P&G load weighs 45,000 pounds, and every 50-pound box of it has to be stripped off of the conveyer, and stacked, right up to the roof of the trailer. Normand is older than Grayson’s father, who has already been forced into retirement by the company because he was too old and worn out to keep up with the work.

  Normand is not shy with his opinions, but he is economical in speech since he has to deal with the challenge of a profound stutter. In the warm up to speak he begins snapping his chops together like an alligator going after a team of ducks.

  Whimsy gone, Rosie glares at Grayson while Normand clacks his teeth together.

  Grayson shrugs. “It’s just I hate standing around. I like being busy.”

  “You know what?” Rosie says. “Guess what? Who cares?”

  Rosie claims to start each day afresh, with a positive attitude, and advises his drivers to do likewise, but it is clear his daily frustrations accrete. He yanks off his clip-on necktie and undoes the collar button on his short sleeve white shirt. If he didn’t do it now, he’s certain to have the tie off before he takes on the big 8:30 AM crew, fifty-two bumptious Teamsters.

  Rosie says, “I don’t make decisions based on what makes you happy, my boy. You’re not the center of the universe.”

  Normand ceases his exertions, puts his hands on his hips and smiles.

  Grayson says, “Yeah, sure, like you know where it is.”

  Rosie scrunches up his face, making his disdain evident.

  “You don’t know,” Grayson says. “It might be me.”

  “Yeah?” Rosie says. “If you go in the toilet to take a wiz, does the center move with you? Or does it stay here in the driver’s room?”

  “No, the whole universe kind of shifts.” He gestures with arms wide, as if making a slight turn on a giant steering wheel hovering chest high. “But not that much in universe terms. The shitter ain’t too far away.”

  Normand laughs and points at Grayson. Normand’s mouth is agape; he snaps it shut a few times, then moves on to Plan B, and begins to nod with vigor. He reaches up and puts his hand on Grayson’s shoulder and they wait until his nodding head pumps the words up and out into the air.

  “We know!” Normand shouts. “The shitter is you!” He smiles, all the way back to the bottom of his ears, and then walks off a dozen steps, stops, turns, and poses a moment. On Normand’s home turf of Fall River this act symbolizes getting in the last word. A long moment passes, and he apparently feels that it has been established he has gotten in the last word, so he comes back.

  “I don’t want this Jordan’s load,” Grayson says. “Stand there like a drip all day. Is that P&G a full load, Normand?”

  Normand takes his glasses out of the vinyl case clipped to his shirt pocket. The brown case is imprinted with the Teamster coat of arms, a spoked wheel with two horses above it, Thunder and Lightning, facing in opposite directions. He flicks open the arms of the black framed glasses, puts them on in a deliberate manner, then unfolds his delivery manifest to its full length and lifts and drops and lifts his chin several times looking it over, like a town crier about to issue a proclamation.

  Meanwhile, Rosie seethes. After several seconds, he beats Normand to the punch.

  “Enough! Shut up, Normand.” Rosie points at Grayson. “Who’s the boss here? Huh? Me, that’s who. So, take the load and go, mister. If you don’t, I will take your refusal as a resignation.”

  “Wow,” Grayson says. “Don’t have a conniption.”

  “You’re just dropping the trailer at Jordan Marsh,” Rosie says. “Grab the empty there and bring it back. I need you to peddle downtown today. Mike G. McCarthy booked off. So, move it.” It’s Boston, and there are multiple Mike McCarthy’s’ in most workplaces so they are forced to go to middle initials for specificity.

  Grayson could have squawked about union rules and bid jobs, but didn’t, since now it seemed like Rosie assigned the easier job to Normand. Peddling freight in a straight truck is a young man’s work. Grayson actually likes banging a P&D run around in the city, not all the time, but occasionally, because when you drove a straight job on a P&D run you work hard and fight the clock all day, trying to make all your deliveries and pickups. It is like a day-long two-minute drill in football, and the time flies by. Hustling a straight truck around in downtown Boston and the Back Bay on a near-spring day is a good way to see a lot of pretty college girls going to class, or sharply dressed women going to work.

  He and Normand walk down the ramp and out into the terminal yard as Normand tussles with his speech apparatus.

  “Why did you squawk?” he says, at long last.

  Grayson says, “To see how quick his necktie would come undone.”

  He does the drop and hook at Jordan’s, returns to the terminal and gets the paperwork for the downtown peddle. He walks out to the dock and looks into the back of his load. He sees four shrink wrapped pallets about midway up in the truck. On the way back out, he stops at his car to retrieve his shades, an extra deck of smokes and a paperback. He also roots around in the trunk, looking for his utility knife, to cut the shrink wrap on the pallets. He makes sure the blade is fully retracted before he puts it in his pocket. One of the guys he works with did not check the blade on his box cutter and as a result, he slit a hole in his pants pocket, and cut his leg to boot.

  Grayson hustles around the city the rest of the morning, making deliveries in a Mack cab-over diesel straight truck. The cab-over is a terrific piece of machinery for working the city. The face of the truck is flat with the top half all glass. The road is about two feet in front of the driver’s nose, and the front wheels are right below him. The wheels can be turned almost side-ways and the truck can get into and out of spots that conventional trucks can’t. One drawback is it gets hot in the cab and with the windows down, it is also loud; the diesel engine mixes a clatter with a roar and a whistling undertone.

  Sometime before noon, the Mack is stopped at a red light in the far-right lane on Arlington St. near the entrance of the Mass Pike. Grayson picks up his clipboard and is looking at the receipt for his last delivery when out of the corner of his eye he sees a motley band of young guys
crossing the street by the high school on the corner. He puts the board down, happy he padlocked the back door of the truck. He looks a little closer at the boys who are by now loosely occupying the middle of the street. These guys, not content to just cut class, are making a raucous escape, raising a racket, loud voices, big showy gestures, playing to the captive audience in the vehicles bunched up at the stoplight.

  The leading edge of the crew is in front of the truck now, and one large, fattish boy emboldened by his cohorts, and, from the look of his rosy cheeks, way overexcited, comes up to the center of the windshield and looks at Grayson.

  “Hey, buddy, that’s a nice bulldog,” the red-faced shithead says, pointing to the chrome hood ornament Mack attaches to every truck. “I think I’ll take it home.”

  With that, the big boy climbs on the front bumper and yanks at the bulldog, while being cheered on by his fellow birdbrains. Grayson slips the transmission into neutral, smiles and stomps on the gas pedal. The big diesel roars, and simultaneously, the fat kid launches himself off the front bumper and lands flat on his back in the road, while his pals jump straight up, and their legs churn the air like cartoon characters. The would-be bulldog snatcher is ass down on the asphalt and wicked quick for a fat kid; he rolls over in a blurry whirl until he reaches the safety of the gutter.

  “Nice reflexes, Pugsley,” Grayson yells through the open window.

  The doughy desperado is on the sidewalk now with his boys, and they are all pushing one another and laughing, pretending to faint and otherwise enjoying having the hell scared out of them. All but the large red-faced boy, who is clearly irate, and gives Grayson the finger, then slaps the crook of his arm, and follows that with flicking his fingers across the bottom of his chin. He is leaving no insult undemonstrated. Grayson blows him a kiss, waves and roars away.

  About quarter to twelve he is in the Back Bay. As he wheels the straight job around the corner from Berkeley to Newbury St., the two-way radio got his attention.

  The straight jobs were all equipped with two-way radio so Rosie could pester the drivers with “hurry up” all day. The radio could be entertaining, too. Rosie would shout a driver’s truck number over the air and get a response, but one driver couldn’t hear what another driver had said, all you could hear was Rosie’s end of the conversation. It often sounds like a Bob Newhart telephone skit. Management and sales cars also came equipped with two-way radios, too, but they were set up to hear both sides of the conversation between driver and dispatch.

  “Go ahead, six-six-three,” Rosie bawls.

  A sound like cloth being ripped came over the air.

  “Six-six-three,” Rosie shouts. “Are you crazy? Tell him no! Wait? We don’t wait!”

  Rosie is still irate when he called Grayson’s truck number.

  “Six-oh-nine!”

  Grayson reaches up and presses the transmit button without saying anything.

  “Whatta you got left?” His ire is easily transferred from one man to the next.

  Grayson picks up the hand set. “Just Kakas Furs on Newbury Street. I’ll be empty in fifteen minutes.” Grayson will actually be empty in ten minutes.

  Rosie says, “Make it ten, and call me.”

  If Grayson had said ten minutes, Rosie would have told him to make it five. Rosie thought he was a great motivator.

  Grayson kept the growl low on the way up Newbury Street, and slides into the loading zone space at the curb. He grabs the red plunger and pulls it out, which cuts the fuel and shuts down the diesel, pulls the switch to lock the brake, slides the delivery receipt off his clipboard, jumps out and heads into the fur store.

  Grayson’s apartment was on Newbury Ave in North Quincy, and here he is on Newbury St. in the Back Bay of Boston. The difference between the Newbury in Back Bay, and the Newbury in North Quincy is the difference between Paris, France and Paris, Maine. Grayson enjoys a glance at the gals, and this street is a fine place for it. He is careful not to ogle, what with three sisters and a number of nieces coming up, he behaves toward women as he’d like others to behave toward the women in his family. But, man, some of these women take your breath away. From time to time, he’d be lugging cartons in or out of someplace and look up to find some sophisticated lady eyeballing him, and he figured what she saw when she looked at him was some L’il Abner-type yokel; a sweaty dipshit in a faded flannel shirt, dungarees and beat up work boots.

  He walks up to the front door, sees a well-dressed woman of a certain age on the other side of the big display window. Her chin is raised, her eyes are closed, her face still, as it is warmed by sunbeams that traveled from 93 million miles away, maybe for just this reason. Grayson hesitates before he goes in the store. This woman is enjoying the sun, one of life’s small pleasures. Unfortunately, Rosie cares about nothing but deliveries, pickups and the Red Sox, and if Grayson doesn’t bust up this moment of Zen, he’ll be in the shit.

  Grayson is announced by the trill of chimes on the door, and it takes the woman a long second to turn. She stands with her hands folded in front of her pelvis, and her knees and ankles together. She is positioned beside a mannequin wearing a mink coat. Behind her, tightly racked furs line the walls, packed in like the cans in the soup aisle at Stop & Shop. On tables set around the store sat hats, stoles, gloves and who knew what else?

  The woman seems to struggle, pulling herself from the sublime to the commercial. She looks over at Grayson and then out the window to the truck.

  “Yes?” she asks.

  “Hi. I have a delivery for you, from Moore Business Forms. Collect.” He held out the delivery receipt for her. She cranes her neck to look at the DR without touching it, as if touching it would convey ownership.

  “For me?” she says.

  “For Kakas Furs,” he says.

  “It’s pronounced kay-kus,” she says, snippy.

  “Good. It sounds a lot better when you say it that way.”

  “Who ordered them?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs amiably. “I’ll bring them in the backroom, while you get me a check for $18.”

  “Just to bring them in?” the woman asks.

  “No, no. For the overall delivery charges.”

  “May I see that again?” He holds the delivery receipt out, and she looks it over fervently, as if hoping to see this is all just one big, horrible mistake.

  “Here,” he says, handing her the DR. “It’s okay. You can touch it. Look at it all you want while I bring them in, okay?”

  “Why did you bring them here?” she asks.

  “Well, my guess is someone here ordered them. It’s not like we picked your name out of a hat. This store is a business, and these are business forms. They go hand in hand, right?”

  She gives him a cold smile, as if she imagines kneeing him in the groin. “What if we didn’t order them?”

  “Does that happen a lot? People come in giving you stuff, nobody knows why? That how you wound up with all these fur coats and everything?”

  She wrinkles her face and says in a tight-lipped whisper. “Don’t get smart, Buster.”

  “Look, I’m just a working stiff trying to do my job, lady.”

  “And don’t pull that beleaguered proletarian act with me. My father was a longshoreman, and I grew up on Bunker Hill St.”

  Grayson smiles. “Well, then be nice or I’ll tell them you’re a Townie.”

  She turns so her back is to the mirrored wall.

  “Listen pal ---” she says.

  Grayson smiles brightly, and shakes his finger. “If Mr. Kakas hears that he’s got a Charlestown gal hanging around the minks he’ll think you’re just here to plot a caper.”

  Her laugh surprises her, but she catches it, kills it and shakes her head.

  “Bring them in, wise guy. I’ll have to go upstairs to get you a check.”

  “Muchas gracias,” he says, bowing slightly.

  At the back of the straight job he stacks five cartons of paper forms on his two-wheel hand truck and gigs the
m in, through the middle of the store and into the back room. There an armed security guard sits on a raised platform looking out at the store, hidden behind what the customer would only see as a big mirror positioned high on the back wall. The uniformed young man is also watching a row of closed-circuit TVs, with shots from six different camera angles, both indoors and out.

  Grayson salutes the guard, who replies with a nod, “Sss-happenin, man.”

  “You tell me,” Grayson says. “You got the fancy TVs.”

  “I see you out there grinning at Lauren,” the guard says.

  “A man can grin, can’t he?”

  “Not for long, brother. She tell you to put them here? They usually go upstairs.”

  Grayson shook his head. “No, no, not these. These don’t go upstairs, they’re special order or some shit. She said, specifically, she said, ‘and don’t let that idiot back there tell you otherwise.’ She mean you?”

  The guard looks hurt, and shrugs. “I’m the only one here.”

  Grayson laughs. “No, she didn’t say that. I’m just kidding you.”

  The guard frowns. “Hey, man, you shouldn’t go about fomenting trouble for people.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.”

  Grayson pulls the two-wheeler out from under the cartons and left them standing five high. He goes back through the store and out the front door to the street.

  As he is going out, a young woman wearing a short skirt and black nylons is coming in and he holds the door open. She’s a knock out; mid-twenties, long, light brown, almost blonde hair, perfect features, high cheek bones and brightly lit, sandy brown eyes. She smiles at him like they both know the same secret. The woman is wearing a three-quarter length, brown leather coat over a black V-neck sweater and a white turtleneck. Her clothes look expensive and exotic, and Grayson has no idea why they do; maybe it’s because she’s wearing them going into a fur store. Her scent drifts by and touches off a desperate longing that makes him want to crumple to the sidewalk. It is the same perfume that Catherine uses, but for a time, he can’t retrieve the name; then it came: Shalimar.