Dwayne's First Day
Paul B Kramer

 

 


"Hey boss, ya'll got a cigarette?"

The same oily malodorous guy, wearing the same hunter's orange vest and Duck-taped sneakers tramped by last Friday and asked the same question. Except back then he called Dwayne "chief." Now it is Monday and Dwayne has an answer if the guy calls him "sir." He will say, "I ain't no sir. I work for a living." (It's a line he picked up from a regular customer, a landlord and retired Navy boatswain's mate who bought paint by the van load. "Slap on a fresh coat of paint and the dump looks brand new," the customer always said.) Then maybe, depending on how the guy reacts, Dwayne will give him a Kool.

But on second thought, he�s glad that the oily guy hadn't called him sir. "Boss" Dwayne realizes that the guy is probably an ex-con; he is definitely post-Vietnam. Maybe he had even been working on a chain gang Dwayne thinks, as the tune plays in his head.

Dwayne bluntly answers, "No, don't smoke," and hopes that the guy gets on his way, like on Friday. After all, it wasn't as if he had been caught in the act. He had learned, the hard way, about the Unwritten Code of the Smoker. It states that if a person is smoking in public, he or she is fair game. The smoker could claim that it's the last of the pack, or there's only one left. A "no" is then implied. But Dwayne is not a good liar when he�s smoking. Invariably, even if he does have just one left, he gives in. And if he is smoking his last one, he says "sorry." It�s an automatic response, one that he regrets saying the second after he says it. So he always waits until just the right time to light up. Cigarettes, he knows from experience, are bum magnets.

The guy stands his ground, staring away from Dwayne, hands in his pockets, pondering whatever. Dwayne stands like a swaying sapling, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, waiting for his bus. He picks at the corner of his eye, wipes his nose with the back of his hand then, Frankenstein-like, goes out onto the street to see if the bus is coming. It isn't. He lumbers back to the bus stop shelter. The guy turns toward Dwayne and succeeds in making eye contact, and it looks as if the gritty sidewalk is permanently etched onto the guy's face. For a split second Dwayne stares into the guy's yellowed bloodshot eyes, then he quickly turns his gaze back to the sky. He stands a head taller than the guy, but he knows he�s a sitting duck; his lankiness gets in the way of his agility.

The guy speaks again. "How's about eighteen cents so's I can get a cup of coffee?" A broad smile appears on Dwayne's pinched, elongated face, momentarily disconcerting the guy. "What's you so happy about, boss man?" Dwayne fingers his moppy black hair away from his eyes then reaches into his right pants pocket. He pulls out three nickels and three pennies, exactly eighteen cents, and hands it over to the guy.

"Here you go." The guy stands, dumbfounded. Little does he know that Dwayne has been waiting for this one opportunity to present itself. Experience with other low-life no-life panhandlers has taught him well. They would always ask him for odd amounts, hopeful that he could be positively coerced into handing over all the change he had. It didn't matter. He never gave them anything, anyway. This time however, he�s prepared, and eager. The exchange, the eighteen cents for the guy's departure, takes away the apprehension that he had felt a moment ago. The guy eyeballs the change, and before he has a chance to say another word, Dwayne turns out his pocket as further proof to the guy that that is all the change he has and says, "That's it."

"Got the time, boss?"

He remembers when he first came to Chicago nine months ago from Sioux City, Iowa. He�d asked for the time from the CTA agent at the Lawrence Avenue "L" stop. "Time to get you a watch," was her response, and it was the first time he thought that maybe he didn't fit in. He wasn't used to getting flippant answers. In Sioux City it seemed like people went out of their way to be helpful. But it was for that very reason that he�d left. To ask for help meant that he needed to bring people into his life that he spent all day trying to avoid, including his family. Sioux City was like an aquarium; he felt like he was always being scrutinized. And there were always ulterior motives tied to their helpfulness, the simplest being that now they had something on him to use as leverage, for whatever. He thought of it as the distorted reciprocity motive. He came anonymously to Chicago like every other unknown; he�d wanted to create a new persona for himself out of his anonymity.

Dwayne hoarsely replied,"7:05," as the damp, morning air made its way into his sinuses, expanding his head, filling his ears. The guy says something; it comes out muffled. Dwayne dumbly nods his head in agreement. He doesn't have a clue as to what was said. The guy gives Dwayne the onceover as he expels a cough that makes the bus shelter vibrate; it sounds like a trumpeter swan in heat. Halfway through the encore he spews what could be a piece of lung; it barely misses Dwayne. Then he hawks up the remainder of the lung, swallows it back down, and goes on his way.

"Good riddance," Dwayne mutters. He twists his head around to unkink his neck, clamps his nostrils shut, and sniffs in. His ears clear instantly, and he walks out into the street to check for the bus. There is none in sight. He walks back to the shelter, looking south, the way the guy had gone. He sees him about half a block away slowly blending in to the background, and yet his odor still lingers. Dwayne steps back to the sidewalk to check for oncomers. There are none.He feels it is safe to smoke; he needs a smoke before he gets on the bus, and with certain deftness he pulls a single smoke from the pack in his jacket pocket and places it into his mouth. Just as he lights it, the guy, who he thought was half a block away, turns around and sees him, and Dwayne knows that he sees him as he blows out the first drag.

The guy starts back toward the shelter, stops when he sees Dwayne's bus pull up, and waits at the stop light. Dwayne takes a quick, unsatisfying puff, boards the bus, and sits in a single seat, next to the window. And as the bus pulls up to a stop at the guy's stop light, Dwayne's eyes meet his. The guy slaps his window and yells, "I'm gonna kill you," and the chattering passengers go silent and look at Dwayne. He shrugs his shoulders, the stop light turns green, and the guy lunges toward the moving bus, spitting out another piece of his greenish brownish lung. Bull's-eye on the window. The silence breaks; Dwayne is finally clear of the guy and as he turns his thoughts inward the bus stops. The front doors hinge open, waiting for the guy. Nobody appears and the doors flap shut. Dwayne lets out a sigh in unison with the air brakes. His first thought is: Tomorrow, new route.

It is 7:20 as he finally settles into anonymity. He thinks about Sioux City. It had been a year since he got laid-off from his job at the Archer Daniels Midland Feed Processing Plant #53. The job was simple- keep the pipe flowing as lysine mixed into the feed product. He hated it after a year and a half, but it was good money at $9.23 per hour, and he was due for his first promotion- which never happened. The company cut a total of 10,000 jobs nationwide. His brother-in-law Jake, the plant manager, who had gotten him the job, and who always held it over his head like he owed him his life and first born son, was no help. "Maybe they'll call you back but probably not," Jake had said. "I'll do what I can." Dwayne had just turned twenty-one. He was two years out of high school.

A crying baby makes Dwayne realize that he wants desperately to stay in Chicago. It isn't that he enjoys the wailing, but because of the smile he receives from the baby�s mother as she gently rocks the baby in her arms. And as the baby quiets down Dwayne makes out fragments of the other conversations going on around him.

"Did you see your feet? A mother says to her teenage daughter."

"Ma-ah."

"You heard me. Did you see your feet? Was they up in the air when you was over at Tommie's studyin'?"

He overhears smatterings of Korean, Russian, Spanish and Farsi, and everything makes sense. He guesses at what they are saying by watching their eyes. He smells coffee and curry powder and cooking oil and bubblegum and shampoo and wet newspapers and sweat, and he wonders if they can smell his dissipating fear.

It�s 8:00 as the bus pulls up to Cicero Avenue, his stop. He exits along with half the passengers and walks across the street as part of the group. Traffic slows to a crawl until the last person is across, and he stands like a Chicagoan among Chicagoans, waiting for the next bus. The man standing next to him lights up a cigarette and he does likewise. Dwayne says, "How about those Bears?"

"Tell me when they's done hibernating," the man answers, without missing a beat.

"They're just out looking for pick-a-nick baskets."

"They must have eaten some bad pie. They look pretty awful."

"Yeah, they do." Dwayne's bus pulls up, and he reaches over to shake the man's hand. "Gotta get to work," he says, and they shake on it. "Maybe I'll see you tomorrow."

"Maybe not." It doesn't matter. The risk pays off and now he is happily set for the rest day. He gets his first unadulterated fix of Chicago, and is hooked. It only took nine months, he thinks. It's like I'm being reborn.

His new-found enthusiasm makes his workday at the Home Depot breeze by, and by the day's end he is calling asphalt ashphalt and Spackle Shpackle and beige baytch.

When he gets home he kicks off his choose, makes a ham sangwitch, even though he would prefer a Polish Sahsitch wit kraut, and plops down in front of the tv, holding the sangwitch in one hand and a can of beer in the other, and watches Monday Night Football until he can�t stand it any longer. It�s a clear rout and at halftime highlights of Sunday's dismal Bears game are being shown, sparking him into action. He guzzles his third beer; he wants more he�s so wide awake but he doesn't want to drink alone, especially tonight, so he decides to take another risk.

But before he leaves it dawns on him that he has a cigarette cellophane wrapper of pot stashed in his desk. It�s enough to roll a joint. He takes a deep drag, snuffs it out, and a second later he smiles. He had forgot how good it felt to be buzzed-up conscious.

Off he goes to the Grin and Beer It bar in Rogers Park, to be part of the crowd. The cool night air sends the chemicals in his bloodstream into overdrive, and the contented smile he had before he left turns into a gratuitously stoned smile. His face feels as if it is sagging. The world looks askew. He lopes past the Aragon into the Lawrence Avenue "L" station, and he looks at his watch, then at the CTA agent, then back at his watch, and says, "It's 8:45 and I got a watch." The agent gives him a questioning leer. "I'm all right. Inside joke is all," and he laughs as he trudges up the stairs to the platform.

He notices the new NO SMOKING signs on the platform just as he is about to light a cigarette. They read: NO SMOKING, Violators subject to fine. There�s no one around, and if he had a Magic Marker, he thinks, it would be a real hoot if he wrote "dining" underneath the word fine. But he doesn't and pockets the cigarette. A train approaches.

He boards and settles in. Just seven stops to Morse Avenue. He gazes out upon the city below as it passes by. He gazes at his own reflection and the reflections of those seated across the aisle. All of the reflections blur into one massive contorted light and suddenly it is too bright for him; he wants to hide his face and crawl back home. He can't believe he is almost in Rogers Park, this late, on a Monday night. But it is as true as the train pulling in at Morse.

He makes his way toward the music coming from the bar and turns back. He calls himself a wimp. It�s now or never. He chooses now and turns back again. He pours himself onto the first bar stool he sees and focuses his eyes intently up at the tv screen. He is back in his shell. The bartender breaks Dwayne�s trance. "What'll you have, Stretch?"

"Old Style?"

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Need a glass?"

"Doesn't it already come in one? Heh-Heh."

"Just asking. One Old Style, coming right up."

After his third beer, which is really his sixth, Dwayne thinks back to that morning bus. The voices of those around him find their way into his consciousness and he is stoned. Billiard balls clack and the jukebox plays and the glasses clink. People come and people go and by midnight all that is left is a core group of six. He is part of the group.

 

 

Copyright © 2010 Paul B Kramer
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"