By Joe Amato

 

“Salt City”

from No Outlet: An Engineer in the Works

 

I recall my father pissing in the lake on a sunny afternoon, after a hotdog from Heid’s. A park cop drives by, spots him, and pulls up. The cop gets out, asks him what he’s doing.

What the FUCK does it look like I’m doing? I’m making my contribution.

My father grabs the half a hotdog sitting on the hood of his car and whips it into the lake. When he gets mad — irritated — like this, his nostrils flare. The cop walks away.

 

Before the Civil War, the salt springs bordering Onondaga Lake produce more than half of all the rock salt used in the States. Solar salt fields line the lake, with a towpath canal for transport, a few miles as the crow flies to the Erie Canal.

As the century winds down, the salt reserves dry up.

A popular amusement park attracts local residents to the north shore at that time, near the area now called Long Branch Park. Where we party on occasion now — folk concerts, Oktoberfests — in the small outdoor amphitheater.

My father, like my grampa, recalls swimming in the salty springs that remain. Onondaga Lake Parkway was just a dirt road then.

The brine would keep you afloat, head above water.

My grampa Rosario works for the Onondaga County Park Dis­trict into his early eighties. He tends the flower gardens. Every­body calls him Roy. Even my father, most of the time. On hot days when we visit him and my gramma in their small upstairs flat, my father wets his hands with cold water, pats his father’s few grey hairs back.

The lake emits a noxious odor when it rains. City storm and sewage systems have been designed to flow together, and the wastewater treatment plant at the south end of the lake allows raw sewage to bypass during a downpour, flowing directly into the lake untreated. Throughout the early and middle decades of this century, pollutants from area industries go unchecked. So in addi­tion to the sewage, two severe hot-spots develop in the lake, where mercury and numerous solvents have accumulated over time. The mercury and solvents are by-products of major employ­ers such as Crucible Steel, where Steve’s father works, and espe­cially Allied Chemical — the famed Solvay Process, a soda ash production process using ammonia and brine, on the west shore, near the fairgrounds. All of which is aggravated by the slow turn­over time of the lake’s water volume, something like six months.

Jobs are jobs.

As kids, we learn not to touch the water. Tiny shells line the shore. A former Jesuit mission outpost, Ste. Marie de Ganentaha, attracts visitors on the east shore. We call it the French Fort. We don’t visit often. We don’t know much about the Jesuits, or the Iroquois. Or the Onondaga Indian Reservation, south of the south side.

 

Watergate is wrapping up.

What do you think of that, Joe? That dirty bastard.

He’s smiling, I’m laughing.

Go on, get the fuck out of there.

We’re in the living room, huddled around the tube. Mike is laughing too. We’re relieved. What next?

We’re broke, on and off welfare. My scholarships are paying tuition, the leftover three hundred I give to my father to help out with the bills. I apply for a two-thousand dollar student loan, put some real effort into the loan application, explaining as honestly as I’m able how the money will figure into our family finances. It’s a long shot, but we’re hard up.

The bank calls — they’ve approved the loan. My father is re­lieved. This takes off some pressure, especially now that Mike is planning to attend Syracuse University in a year, majoring like me in math and mechanical engineering.

 

They say the best jobs are inside jobs. In May, Helen puts us on to this company she works for, Salt City Auxiliary. Part of the VFW. Or so they say.

Salt City Auxiliary sells patriotic junk, by phone. They pay a fixed fee to the VFW to use their name. Helen works one of the phones. And they need delivery boys. We’ve got wheels, so we bite.

 A buck per delivery, provided the customer actually pays for the merchandise.

Mike and I pull up to this four-five bedroom home in Manlius. Nice lawn, double-car garage, new shitbox sitting in the driveway. I get out and open the trunk. Mike pulls out the delivery notice, and tells me which small red-white-blue box, Made in Taiwan, to pick out of the larger boxes. Price is ten bucks. As we walk up the driveway, the front door opens.

Good afternoon, sir. We have a delivery you ordered from Salt City Auxiliary? It’s ten dollars.

He’s staring directly at me. Well-dressed, maybe forty. I can’t help looking over his shoulder, into the sunken living room in white shag, the solid mahogany hutch, the kitchen with built-in bar.

The guy looks down at the boxed bauble I’m holding in my hand.

We didn’t buy that piece of shit.

He shuts the door.

 

We pull up to a poor neighborhood on the south side. The lawns are small, the houses are small. Like where we live. Cheap postwar construction. I ring the doorbell of what looks to be a two bedroom Cape Cod. A small old black lady opens the door. I pitch the merchandise, she lets me in. She walks me into her living room, asks me, in a soft voice, to wait a moment. Though the day is sunny, the living room curtains are drawn, the room bathed in shadows.

To my left, there’s a shrine of sorts. I shift a bit closer, peer at it. Two small American flags, criss-crossed. Two lamps illuminate a number of old black & white photos. The centerpiece consists of three portraits of three men, all in uniform. One is a good deal older than the other two.

She returns with the money.

On a good day, we net maybe thirty bucks, minus gas.

 

I run into Keith, my friend from high school, at the Cinema East. He tells me about a non-union construction job, building a new apartment complex up in Bayberry. I decide to give it a shot.

My father drives me up, waits in the car. When I walk over to the site, I can see a swarthy looking man barking orders. He’s wearing a white hard hat. I summon up the male in me, try to be forceful.

Hi, I understand you have openings for laborers?

Only for those who can pull their own.

Well, I can.

OK. Tomorrow morning, 7 am. Don’t be late.

And I report to you?

Who the fuck else? Yeah. Fran Dell.

I offer my hand, we shake.

I turn and walk back to the car.

Who’s that, Joe? — the boss?

Yeah, Fran Dell.

Fucking wop, changed his name. Probably a Dellapino or a De­Laurio.

The next morning, first thing Fran has me do is carry forty buckets of paint a hundred yards across the construction site and into a near-finished apartment. As I lift the last bucket, I’m nearly out of breath, my shoulders are straining, and my ankles ache.

Hey, take it easy there, boy. Wanna save yourself for later.

He seems OK. But something about him puts me off.

The next day, digging a drainage ditch with three other guys. It’s hot as hell. After an hour of digging, I’ve developed a bad blis­ter, in the middle of my left palm, right where the shovel handle sets. Suddenly, we all hear some shouting. We stop digging.

GET THE FUCK OFF THIS SITE!

But Fran, listen —

Hit the road, pal, hit the FUCKING ROAD. I don’t have time for FUCK-UPS like you.

The carpenter tags along, pleading, a guy around thirty. But Fran ignores him. Ashamed, we’re all ignoring him as well. Or tying to.

Fran registers the momentary work stoppage.

What the FUCK is everybody looking at — GET TO WORK!

The carpenter turns slowly, picks up his few tools, and walks away.

When we stop for break at ten o’clock, everybody heads over to the snack truck. Fran walks by.

I should tell this fucking PRICK not to stop by. Fucking long­haired hippie FAGGOTS. Fucking lazyassed PRICKS.

My hair is just above shoulder length, hanging all over the place. Like a number of the guys.

 

I figure my days are numbered. The pay is OK, three bucks an hour, but Fran harasses us every chance he gets. If the concrete truck arrives at lunch, he works us through lunch. My father isn’t real happy when I tell him about this.

He’s a goddamn slavedriver, Joe, like alla these wops who get a little power. Fucking guinea bastard. Probably voted for Nixon.

 

One day three weeks later, after heavy rains. The construction site now a mud-fest. Fran pulls me from some inside work and walks me out into the mud. He uses his arms to indicate an area about five feet by five feet, and points to the center.

There’s a water valve down in this location, maybe four-five feet deep. I want you to dig down, here, and clear it out around the valve.

He points to the center of the area, walks away. I start to dig.

You can’t dig straight down — it’s all mud, and every shovelful fills with water. You need first to create some room to dig — to be able to push your shovel head in on a flat and pull it out, without having to twist and pry it vertically, and underwater, to boot. So I start a few feet away, and gradually trench down toward the loca­tion Fran has given me. Fran returns.

What the FUCK do you think you’re doing?

I’m digging a hole.

Who the FUCK taught you to dig like that? I said over here — the valve’s down here, not way the FUCK over there.

You can’t dig straight down.

Gimme that fucking shovel.

I try to hand him the fucking shovel but he grabs it out of my hands. He pokes the shovel down into the mud, and leans all of his two-hundred pounds into it. It barely budges, and as he’s struggling to pull it out, the shovel head buried almost instantly in a foot of water, I smile, looking right at him.

My grandfather can dig better than you.

Fran looks up, puzzled at first.

Is that a fact?

Yeah.

Is that a FUCKING FACT?

Yeah, that’s a fact. My grandfather can dig better than you.

Well then you can just hit the FUCKING road. Just get the fuck out of my sight and HIT THE FUCKING ROAD.

Fine. I’ll be back for my paycheck in a week.

I’m still smiling.

 

A week later I walk up to Fran, sitting atop a dozer. When he sees me, he looks down with what seems to me a moment of re­gret. But it passes. He reaches into his jacket pocket, and hands me the envelope with my paycheck.

Thanks.

He nods.

 

That same summer. I can’t get a full-time job to save my life. Just odd jobs. Moving organs and pianos for a day. Helping my uncle Sam junking.

Middle of the summer, Helen has switched jobs. She’s now at Big Ben Chemical, a warehousing operation in Solvay. They say they eat cats there. All my life I’ve wondered why they say this. Doubt I’ll ever find out.

Helen works all day packaging dye, scooping it out of large drums and pouring it into small containers. The dye gets all over everything — clothing, skin. The stains don’t wash off.

She tells my father that they have an opening in the warehouse area. Minimum wage, $2.50 an hour. Sounds good. Only three weeks left till classes start, but what the hell. My father is working down on Erie Boulevard at another finishing shop, making eight bucks an hour under the table. He can drop me off on his way to work.

 

The next day, I’m standing in a dingy office, in front of this short burly man, Clint. Clint tells me that they handle bags of salt. He says it’s heavy work, and he asks me if I think I’m husky enough for the job. Like any young guy, I nod.

He leads me out into the warehouse area. The floors are wood, the entire place a musty odor, punctuated by whiffs of exhaust from the few tow motors that whiz by. Clint introduces me to Jeff.

Jeff is my age, a bit shorter. But leaner, more muscular. Like me, he wears glasses. Like me, his hair is long — longer than mine. He seems down-to-earth, even friendly. He’s missing one front tooth, has chipped another.

C’mon. I’ll show you what to do.

He leads me through the warehouse, across a threshold, into what looks to be a long, narrow room. Maybe forty feet long, ten feet wide. At one end of the room is a pile of large brown bags, neatly stacked. Each bag contains roughly one hundred pounds of salt — calcium chloride, the same stuff they throw on the streets winters, mixed with sand.

Jeff pulls a pallet — what I learn later is a forty-eight incher — out of a pile of pallets. He throws it on the floor, in front of the bags. Like our voices, the thud echos as though the room is hol­low. Then he shows me how to grab and stack the bags. At first the weight seems severe. But after ten or fifteen minutes, I get used to the weight. I must.

As we finish stacking each pallet seven bags high, or twenty-eight bags total, a tow motor enters the room. The driver, a stocky bearded man, aligns the forks with the pallet carefully and quickly, and carries it off. Sometimes he arrives just a bit early. So he sits on the tow motor, goosing the engine, while Jeff and I hurry to finish. Jeff grimaces.

Fuckin straw boss asshole.

I smile.

I hear you — but he can too.

I don’t give a shit.

About a half-hour passes, and we finish stacking the bags. The room is empty now.

Ten o’clock, time for fuckin break, let’s go.

Good thing, my hands are getting raw.

Jeff smiles. He takes me over to another part of the warehouse, where I meet four other men. Otis, a bit older and taller than me, heavy set, thickly muscled. He makes Jeff look small. Eddie, lean, worn, in his thirties. Wimbleton, a bit older too, a strapping six footer who says he’s there to condition himself for football in the fall. And another guy, who evidently used to work there, a friend of Eddie’s. Otis, Eddie and Eddie’s friend are black, Jeff, Wimble­ton and I are white. Otis, Jeff, Wimbleton and myself are the la­borers. Everybody is a laborer at times, though Eddie mostly drives tow motors these days. Otis and Jeff sometimes drive tow motors, but only when there’s no lifting to do.

We’re eating donuts drinking coffee everybody seems friendly. I’m enjoying myself. Red, the bearded foreman, is nowhere in sight. Nobody likes Red, who’s white. Clint walks by — every­body likes Clint. Clint is white too.

C’mon guys. Time to get back to work.

Otis is smiling at me.

You think you gonna last?

What do you mean?

Last college boy we had lasted one day, that’s it.

He’s still smiling.

Something about this bothers me, I can’t say what. But it’s clear we like each other.

After about a half-hour, the group breaks up. Time to get back to work.

Jeff leads me over to another threshold area. But this time the entrance is closed, and I can see clearly now that the threshold is in fact a loading dock. And I suddenly understand that the little room I was in was the inside of a rail car. This time, the rail car doors are banded shut.

Jeff grabs a large clipper off of a stack of bags near the entrance. He snaps the metal banding, and pulls open the doors. As he opens the doors, I can see that the entire car is chock-full of hun­dred pound bags of salt.

It’s a wall of salt bags. I walk up and peer in, looking left and right. A forty-foot long rail car filled to my height with hundred pound bags of salt.

Don’t worry — we have all day to unload this one.

All day? You mean we’ve got to unload this car today? Every fucking bag?

Jeff nods.

All one thousand of ‘em. Here, I’ll start this one.

He grabs a pallet, and places it over the gap between the car en­trance and the loading dock. As he’s working, he explains the ob­vious — that there’s no room in the car yet to place the tow motor ramp, the same ramp over which we apparently walked earlier. Something else I just didn’t see. Then he spreads his feet apart, one foot on the ledge of the car, the other two feet away, on the concrete ledge of the loading dock. And he stretches up, grabbing each hundred pound bag and guiding its weight so as to form a perfect stacking pattern on the pallet. UMP. The waist-high bags almost slide on. UMP. UMP. But when he gets to the bags toward the bottom, he’s forced to pick them up and pull them into place. UG-UMP. They’re warm, the bottom bags, some soaked with moisture the salt has absorbed, the salt itself melting in the process and leaking from the bags to produce a strong brine solution that covers the rail car floor. UG-UMP. UG-UMP.

It takes us two hours to unload the entire car. My hands, my fingertips, have begun to blister. And the salt has gotten into the wounds.

The job is now clear: two men, two cars a day, two to three hours a car. Sometimes a forty footer, or a thousand bags — some­times a fifty footer, or twelve hundred bags. A thousand bags minimum, about three-dozen forty-eight inch pallets. That’s a hundred and forty feet of pallets, butted together, nearly head-high. That’s two such rows, in four hours. That’s one row a man. That’s four bags a minute a man, on average. Or a bag every fif­teen seconds. Steady, for four hours straight. That’s forty-eight tons a man in a half a day, on average.

At $2.50 an hour. Depending on how early you finish, fuck-off time to spare. Otis and Wimbleton unload two cars each a day, by themselves. Jeff stands in awe of Otis.

Otis’s pallets are neat, man. Wimbleton just heaps ‘em the fuck on.

At this point, neatness is not what most impresses me. But I’ll learn that, even here, appearances matter.

 

That first night after work, my father gets off early and picks me up. He has to stop by my grandparents’ on the way home. We park right in front on State Street, and walk upstairs.

Look at Joey’s hands, Pa.

I show my grampa my blisters. He’s hunched over from a life­time of labor. He stares down, shakes his head slowly.

Wait minute.

He shuffles over to the porch, comes back with a pair of gloves.

Here. Before should use these.

Thanks Grampa.

He shakes his head again.

 

The next day, I appear with the pair of gloves, my fingertips raw, blistered. I’m to work with Otis today.

Otis and I walk over to a rail car. He opens the door, and we begin. It’s a little after 7 am. We hit it off.

But my hands are hurting like hell. I try to pull the glove off, but my fingers stick to the inside. When I get the gloves off, my blisters are oozing. Both hands, middle fingers, forefingers and pinkies. Otis is concerned.

You ain’t gonna work like that.

Watch me.

Rub some dirt in.

Huh?

Rub some dirt into the blisters. S’what I do.

I don’t follow his advice. Too late for gloves, too late for advice. I work that day till my blisters pop and peel. I work till the pink skin underneath begins to bleed.

 

The ritual is so: I come to work from that day forward with gauze and dressing tape, and Otis helps me bandage up my hands. I take Otis’s kindness at face-value — he is genuinely con­cerned about my hands. At the same time, he’s generally friendly, seems to want to get to know me, so I reciprocate his overtures.

When Otis is through with the wrapping, I look like Im-Ho-Tep come to life. But it kills the pain.

 

Otis lifting bags a sight to see. He smokes a cigarette usually, breathes in and out through his nose. When he gets going, the hundred-pound bags seem to fly up, into his arms, and fly out, onto the pallets. Flawless coordination, timing.

One day he and Jeff decide to have a contest. They’ll pick up two bags at a time.

Jeff grabs two, and strains as he lifts them onto the pallet. Otis begins to huff as he lifts two. Then another two, then another two, then another two. UMP. UMP. UMP. UMP. Jeff stops, and Otis’s upper arms expand to tree-limb size. Two bags fly into place with a heavy thud every six or seven seconds. UMP-UMP. UMP-UMP. Red smiles as he sits atop the tow motor. Jeff smiles, stopping. I smile. Eddy ducks his head in, smiling.

That Otis.

 

Turns out Otis hails from North Carolina. One hot August day, almost finished with a car, we shoot the shit a bit.

I used to work in a saw mill.

What was that like?

We’d cut the trees, then have to carry ‘em down the hill.

By hand, walking?

Yeah. Was hard work.

And this isn’t?

Not as hard.

Otis is married, I don’t really get all the details. But his family has moved up to Syracuse from North Carolina. He lives some­place on the south side.

 

My hands are pretty much shot now, after three days of work. But I’ve grown used to the pain, and the other guys respect me.

First college boy who’s stuck it out.

Jeff, Otis and I horse around a lot. One day roughhousing with Otis, he grabs me by the inside of my leg and my waist, turning me sideways and holding me up in the air in front of him. I’m around a hundred forty pounds.

Put me the fuck down you fucker!

We’re all laughing.

That Otis.

 

One day Red is busting Jeff and me but good. Red is hustling, trying to push us to work faster. It’s his mood, and his moods are plain mean. He keeps goosing the motor, his way of busting our balls. Eddie is in the shithouse, hung-over. We don’t have much choice but to try to keep up.

Let’s show that fucker, that cocksucker.

We start to bristle. Before you know it, we’re humping.

Let’s go! Let’s hump it!

Bag after bag after bag. We finish so fast we end up having to wait for Red, who’s whipping his tow motor around like a mad­man. He’s pissed now, Jeff and I are smiling. We’re flicking him the bird behind his back, giving him the big double-fuck-you.

We keep it going. We lift and stack onto pallets five-hundred and thirty hundred pound bags in a half an hour. Neatly. That’s one

bag

every

seven

seconds

for thirty minutes non-stop. Apiece.

We showed that asslicking clit!

I’m laughing my ass off, exhausted. My back, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers are throbbing.

 

Jeff comes in one day, limping. He’s fallen down a flight of stairs.

Joe, you’ve got to carry me today.

I do the best I can. Red pushes Jeff extra hard, knowing that he’s injured.

The end of that first week I get paid for 39.9 hours. I’ve been docked for showing up five minutes late one day. My take home is just under eighty bucks.

 

Most of the time I work with Otis. When we have no rail cars to unload, we’re sent to the back of the warehouse. It’s here we make pallets.

There are two large stacks of lumber. In between the stacks stands a metal table, its surface a template. Each man takes his place on either side. The job is, first, for each man to pick up the right number of slats, throw them onto the template, and arrange the pieces. Then each man grabs the large pneumatic stapler, hanging from above and alongside the table on each side — and as deftly as possible, staples the slats together.

CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK.

Two hundred pallets a day. If you finish early, you fuck off. You can finish in four hours if you know what you’re doing.

And Otis does. He shows me how to do it. At first the staple guns are heavy and awkward, but after a few hours, I don’t feel the weight at all. I learn how to use the weight to my advantage.

So what’s a white boy like you doing here? CHOCK.

I explain about college.

College huh? CHOCK CHOCK.

Yeah.

What you study? CHOCK CHOCK.

I explain about math — I always figure myself more the math major than the engineer.

I take math once. CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK. Way back. But I had to leave school. CHOCK CHOCK. Hey — no, not that way, like this. CHOCK CHOCK.

He shows me how to staple a corner.

One day, the warehouse is empty save for Otis and me.

You look sweet. CHOCK CHOCK.

Yeah, sure. You like Foreman or Ali? CHOCK CHOCK.

You a sweet lookin’ white boy, oooh. CHOCK CHOCK.

He’s smiling, half joking. Half not.

Lay off, will ya? Foreman or Ali?

George is a tough man, but — I like you. CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK.

Yeah well I like you too. CHOCK CHOCK.

You do? CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK.

Fuck you. CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK.

Mmmmmm. CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK CHOCK.

C’mon will ya? — Foreman or Ali? CHOCK CHOCK.

Ooooh, sting like a bee. CHOCK CHOCK.

Will you knock it off? CHOCK CHOCK.

So it goes that day, and whenever we’re left alone from that day forward. Otis never gets physical. And we don’t talk about it after.

 

Toward the end of my second week at Big Ben, the tip of my left forefinger starts to swell. Within three days, my fingertip en­larges to half again its normal size. The lump hurts like hell, a dull ache.

My final day of work, three weeks to the day I started, the Fri­day before Labor Day weekend. Jeff cuts the banding off of the last rail car door. It’s a fifty footer. I have my back turned.

Uh-oh. Fuck! — it’s tilted.

I turn to see all of the bags of salt shifted to the right. And in­stead of being piled on top of on another in vertical stacks, the bags are dovetailed, one atop the other.

The engineer jogged the fucker.

What this means for Jeff and me is that we need help. We get Otis. Each bag must be pulled, yanked out of its place, and lifted onto pallets. That’s a tug of war lasting roughly one thousand one hundred and ninety-nine bags. Rough on your hands, your fin­gers. It takes the three of us three and a half hours. By the end of the day, when we say our goodbyes, I can’t feel my forefinger.

 

On Saturday, the tip of my forefinger has begun to turn green. It’s evening, and my friend Rick agrees to try to poke a hole in it with a needle heated over his stove. He does it, and squeezes. Fluid comes out, but not near enough. Julie tells me I should see a doctor. Julie’s mother tells me I should see a doctor.

Lenny agrees to drive me to the medical center a mile down Buckley Road. My doctor is not in, he’s off on vacation in Stock­holm, so I have to see a guy named Paris.

The nurse is brusque. I figure she doesn’t want to be working tonight, on a holiday weekend. She brings me to one of the exami­nation rooms, and asks me to sit up on the examination table. Paris walks in, asks to see my finger. I hold out my hand, he places it in his. He takes one look at it, and shakes his head.

You stupid kid. You know what we’ll have to do, don’t you? I’ll be back in a little while.

He leaves. I’m beginning to sweat. I shift my weight on the tis­sue paper and it tears. I stare at the diplomas on the wall. Paris is a former Army medical surgeon. The nurse walks in and places a small bowl of something brown where I’m sitting.

Place your finger in this.

She leaves and returns with several items that she arranges on the nearby countertop: a scalpel, cotton swabs, an antiseptic of some sort. That’s it.

After maybe fifteen minutes, Paris reappears with the nurse.

OK. Now lean back. This is gonna hurt.

I lean back, my feet still dangling. Paris straightens my right arm, lays it flat, palm up. The nurse holds my arm down by grab­bing a hold of my upper arm with both hands. Paris leans his left arm over my forearm, letting the weight of his body fall on it. He holds my right hand with his left hand. My arm and hand are immobilized. He presses hard.

I see his right hand reach for the scalpel.

Suddenly I feel a sharp pain. Paris squeezes. Then more pain. And more pain still. Paris moves slightly to readjust his grip on me. He squeezes hard. More pain. Somehow I feel his hand move up and down. I hear myself groaning, almost from a distance. I’m aware that I’m soaked with sweat. My eyelids are sweating, my eyes are burning. I look up at the nurse, she’s looking down at my hand, wincing. I close my eyes. The pain lasts for three or four minutes, three or four hours. I can’t tell.

That’s it. Try to sit up now, slowly.

I sit up, in a daze. My finger is bandaged, I can’t see it.

You OK?

I nod.

I’ll be back in a minute. Just rest here.

Paris and the nurse leave. Then he returns.

I want you to start taking these pills immediately. And I want you back in here on Tuesday. You’ll have to soak your finger in saltwater every day, fifteen minutes. It needs to drain. If this doesn’t work, you may lose the tip of your finger. You under­stand?

I nod.

I walk out of the office, past the nurse, whose concerned look concerns me. Lenny is waiting.

Hey, you look like a ghost.

He drives me home. My ears are ringing.

When I walk upstairs, my father takes one look at me and asks me if I’m in pain.

Yes.

Did he prescribe any painkillers?

I don’t know.

My father looks through the drugs.

No painkillers. Why that fucker. What’s this guy’s name?

Paris. Dr. Paris.

My father gets on the phone.

Dr. Paris? Listen, my boy Joey is here, and he’s in pain. What the hell do you think you’re doing? How the hell come you didn’t prescribe painkillers for the boy?

A moment of silence while my father listens.

OK: listen, I want you to send a prescription over to Fay’s. Now. OK?

My father leaves, comes back with the painkillers. They help.

 

When Paris sees me the following week, the wound has begun to scab. He has to break it open. I lean back, he squeezes.

Your father was kind of angry the other night, huh?

I groan.

Yeah, that’s the way he is.

I understand. OK, keep soaking it. C’mon back in next week.

The next week I lean back, he squeezes.

As I’m healing, I try to understand what happened. The way I see it, I must have picked up a sliver over in the pallet area. The way I see it, I owe Paris a tip of a forefinger.

With the painkillers, the medical bill comes to sixty bucks. So for my efforts at Big Ben, I net a hundred eighty bucks for three weeks’ work. Don’t ask why we didn’t try to claim it on work­men’s comp. The money goes into a new set of tires for the shit­box, to replace the old set worn out by my delivery job.

 

November. We’re back to collecting welfare checks. Mike and I are both taking classes.

It’s snowing hard, early season lake effect squall. Helen calls — she can’t get her car started. My father still at work, I tell her I’ll pick her up.

Mike and I hop into the shitbox. Driving down Hiawatha Boulevard, skidding this way and that. The plows have been through once, but it’s coming down hard. The sand & salt mixture flicks up off the tires into the wheel wells, a steady ticking sound. We pull up in the Big Ben parking lot, which they share with the Chinatown Outlet Store. We walk in, I show Mike where I used to work while Helen gets ready to leave.

Hi Clint.

Clint shakes my hand.

This is Mike.

They shake.

Where’s Jeff?

Oh, Jeff fucked hisself up but good, fell or somethin’. And just stopped coming in.

And Otis — where’s Otis?

He put a staple through his hand one day. That was it for him, he never showed again. But I’ve got a coupla new guys. They’re both used to this sort of work.

He motions over his shoulder, where two stocky black men in their thirties are leaning up against a pallet of salt, getting set to go home for the day.

 

Life is a lottery. You pay to play, the scarred fingerprints you earn for your time tracing solvent conspiracies of industry and earth.

 

Five-six years later, I’m in a bar having a few beers. I get to talk­ing with the guy next to me. He’s maybe five years older. He says he used to work at Allied.

Oh yeah? I worked one summer for a few weeks right down the tracks from you guys.

Doing what?

Unloading rail cars full of salt.

No shit? We loaded those fuckers.

No shit?

Yeah. Bitch of a job. It’d take us a coupla days to get one boxcar loaded.

Huh? What do you mean?

A coupla days — we’d have six or seven guys gradually load ‘em up, then send ‘em down the fuckin track.

We’d unload each car in two hours.

Huh? What the fuck you mean?

I mean two fucking hours. Two fucking hours, two fucking men. Two fucking cars a fucking day.

No fuckin way.

No fucking way my fucking ass. Two fucking hours two fuck­ing men two fucking cars a fucking day. We had guys could do it by themfuckingselves, a fucking man per.

You’re shittin me.

I shit you not. We had this one guy, Otis, black kid, could do two by hisfuckingself in a day.

Holy fuckin Christ. Two fuckin’ hours. Jesus fuckin Christ. Minimum?

I nod. He rolls his eyes.

Jesus fuckin Christ. We’d get paid ten-twelve bucks a fuckin hour, plus overtime. Two fuckin hours. Fuck me.

He shakes his head. He buys me a beer. I buy him a round.

 

Years later, there are still plenty of fish in Onondaga Lake. And warning signs posted as to eating same. And there’s talk about developing the lakeside area, and bringing fishing back. On the east shore, a million bucks or more has since gone into restoring the mission. On the south shore, atop the ancient junkyard site, stands the large mall, adjacent to the wastewater treatment plant. Inside the mall, the restored carousel from the old amusement park goes round and round. But still no solution in sight to the sewage and pollutant problem, save pumping the overflow down­stream, trusting that faster currents, which lead ultimately into Lake Ontario, will do a better job of aeration, of microbiological clean-up.

 

They say you can’t step twice into the same river.

 

It’s not right. It’s just not right. Life is not a lottery.

Life is a lottery.