Hose monkey

Saturday, Late Afternoon Valent,ine’s Day February 14th, 2004

The faint ghost of the winter sun was hanging low over the western L.I.E. The smell of snow mixed in the air with that of diesel exhaust. Joe Serpe was done for the day. Say Hallelujah! Say Amen! All told, he’d done twenty-five stops, loaded twice and pumped 3,453 gallons. At ten bucks a stop and ten a load, that was a neat 270 bucks cash in his pocket. It was a lot more in Frank’s pocket, of course, but Joe didn’t sweat that the way the other drivers did. He could do the math. With prices the way they were, Frank was grossing between fifty and sixty bucks a stop. Multiply that times three trucks and it’s a nice chunk of change.

Sometimes, Joe enjoyed listening to the other drivers grouse about how much profit Mayday Fuel Oil, Inc. took in on a winter Saturday. It was an October to April ritual, a weekly big boys bitch-fest at Lugo’s Pub in Ronkonkoma. Joe would just smile, empathetically nodding his head every now and then to show he was still listening. Sure, Frank made good money, but he had taken the risks, bought the trucks, rented the yard and office, paid for advertising, etc. At Lugo’s, Joe would drift off trying to calculate how many millions of dollars he and his partner Ralphy had logged into evidence over the years. The numbers were staggering. He didn’t like thinking about Ralphy.

“Ah, shit!” he screamed at the cell phone buzzing and beeping in his pocket. He had been schooled by the other drivers on the art of the tactical lie, but had chosen to ignore their advice. Now he was going to pay the price for that decision. He had done enough lying as a cop. In the end, it was what had ruined him and Ralphy both.

“Listen,” one of the Lugo’s crowd had advised early on, “call in when you’re headed toward your last stop and say you’ve already done it and that you’re almost back at the yard. Otherwise, if an emergency call comes in, you’re screwed.”

True enough. In boxing, it’s cool to be the last man standing. In the home heating oil business, the last man standing is fucked.

“Yeah, Ma,” Joe picked up. The dispatcher was Frank’s mom. Some drivers called her Mrs. Randazzo or Donna, but Joe, his own mother long dead, just called her Ma.

“Oh, Joe,” she rasped in her two-pack-a-day voice, “I hate to do this to ya, but I misplaced a stop before and the guy just called back looking for his delivery.”

“Can’t wait till Monday, huh?” Joe asked, already knowing the answer. “It’s beginning to snow out here.”

“Sorry, Joe, he’s out and he’s a new customer.”

Yeah, sure, Joe thought, they’re always out. It was one of those convenient lies people told to make sure you’d come in a hurry, or, when things were really busy, to make sure you’d come at all.

“Okay, Ma, lemme pull over here and get a ticket.”

“The name’s Healy,” Ma said when Joe gave her the go ahead. “H-E-A-L-Y. He’s at 89 Boxwood Avenue in Kings Park, off 25A. It’s a fill up at the two hundred gallon price. Cash. The fill’s on the right side of the house up the driveway. You copy that, Joe?”

He copied all right. Not only was he stuck doing another stop, but it was way the hell up on the North Shore. That’s why Ma had sounded so guilty. Delivering oil is dangerous enough in perfect weather, but in the snow, in the dark. Forget about it! If you think controlling a skid is fun in your family car, try it in a Mack truck sometime. He pulled away from the curb and began slowly backtracking his way over the L.I.E., through Hauppague and Smithtown, up Landing Avenue, down Rose Street and onto 25A.

Fifteen slippery minutes later he was in Kings Park. Kings Park was a cute little town whose name had nothing to do with royalty and everything to do with the now shuttered psychiatric hospital that bore the same name. The hospital was established as an offshoot of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, hence the Kings in Kings Park. The town had grown up around the extensive hospital grounds situated on an inlet of Long Island Sound.

Joe turned onto Boxwood, his eyes trying to focus on some address, any address, just to establish the odd numbered side of the street. That was no mean feat at night with the snow piling up on the ledge of the tugboat’s side windows and mirrors. Old Macks are great trucks, but their heating and defrosting systems are for shit. About a quarter of the way up Boxwood, Joe caught a number on a mailbox. 43. Bingo!

89 Boxwood was a neat split ranch-gee, what a surprise on Long Island. Normally, he would have parked the truck, gone to the front door and confirmed the delivery. He was too tired, too pissed-off to do his normal routine. He popped the air brake, put the truck in neutral, flipped on the PTO and shifted into third gear. He set the meter, primed the pump, yanked the hose over his shoulder and walked up a stranger’s driveway for the twenty-sixth time that day. It was days like this Joe most regretted complaining to Frank about the kid. Cain wasn’t a kid, not really, but his being retarded made him seem like one. Christ, he was a good two inches taller than Joe and strong as an ox for someone so reedy thin. Country strong, Frank called him. Retard strong; Dixie, one of the other drivers, was less kind.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Cain. He did. Joe was the one who gave him the nickname King Kong. It fit-Cain Cohen, King Kong. The perfect moniker for a hose monkey. Even now as Joe shlepped the hose, he smiled thinking about the kick the kid got out of the nickname. He was so proud of it. The thing was, Cain drove Joe a little nuts. When they stuck to subjects like sports, they were okay. In fact, it kind of reminded Joe of riding the streets with his first partner, but you could only talk so much sports and Saturdays could be very long days.

The kid was a little too preoccupied with that Japanese anime crap. And the kid could fool you. He sometimes seemed almost bright, but Joe had learned there was a limit to the kid’s range. There was just some stuff that Cain couldn’t get no matter how many times you explained it to him. That wouldn’t have been bad if the kid wasn’t so freaking curious. He asked a million questions and it was one of these questions that had finally gotten to Joe.

“Why is Frank’s company called Mayday, Joe?”

“Cause Frank thought it was a good name that people would remember.”

“Why? It sounds like a stupid name to me. What does May have to do with oil? It’s hot in May and we don’t deliver a lot of oil in May.”

“Mayday’s got nothing to do with the month of May, Kong.”

“Then what’s it mean?”

“It means ‘help me.’ Even though we spell it m-a-y-d-a-y, it comes from the French m’aidez, m-a-i-d-e-z, which means ‘help me.’”

“But we don’t speak French in America, Joe, so that’s stupid.”

After about a half-hour of going round and round, Joe had cut off the discussion. That night he went to Frank and asked for the kid to be taken off the tugboat. Two months had passed since then. Cain had gotten over his initial hurt, but Joe still felt shitty about it. He had come to the realization that the kid’s questions were painful echoes from his own life. His son, Joey, now fourteen and living with his mother and stepfather in Daytona Beach, had always been a curious kid. Worse even were the echoes of Vinny in the kid’s questions.

Joe hooked up the nozzle to the fill pipe. He was about to start for the front door, when he heard a storm door slam shut and footsteps coming his way.

“Fill up?” Joe shouted.

“Whatever she’ll take,” a man answered back, his footsteps growing louder as they grew nearer. “I shoulda checked the tank a week ago, but… There’s alotta things I shoulda done.”

Joe said nothing. He heard this lament or versions thereof several times a day. He slid the trigger open and got a strong vent whistle. The homeowner was standing right behind him now. Joe didn’t bother looking up. He wasn’t interested in making friends and influencing people. He just wanted to get done.

“I really appreciate your coming so late.”

“No sweat,” Joe lied through clenched teeth.

“This weather sucks, doesn’t it?” the customer asked. “My wife used to love the snow. Me, I got no use for it.”

“Oh God,” Joe muttered to himself, “a fuckin’ talker.”

“Did you say something?”

“No, nothing. Yeah, this weather sure does suck.”

“It must be rough for you, working in this shit. No?”

Suddenly, a chill rode the length of Joe Serpe’s spine. There was something about this guy’s voice, the way he phrased things that was eerily familiar. Frantically, he searched his memory, trying to recall the customer’s name. The whistle weakened, the tank almost full. Joe did not take notice as he tried remembering Ma spelling the name out for him. What was the name? Now, the whistle died completely. Joe did not slap the trigger shut. There was a loud gurgling in the vent pipe, oil rising up fast. Healy! Christ almighty! Joe snapped back into the present, smacking the trigger closed. Only a few drops of oil sputtered out the vent pipe turning the virgin snow beneath the color of cherry ices. The customer seemed not to take notice.

“Okay,” Joe said. “I’ll write you up and meet you at the front door.”

“Good. I’ll get the cash.”

Joe did not turn to look as Mr. Healy retreated. Instead, he looked at the fresh footprints as he carried the hose back to the tugboat. When he removed the ticket from the meter, Joe noticed his hands were shaking. No, he thought, it had to be a different Healy. There must be hundreds of Healys on Long Island. Joe filled in the totals, laughing at himself for being such an idiot. He felt like some brokenhearted teenager who runs into an old girlfriend. He walked up to the door, bill in hand, an embarrassed smile on his face. He knocked at the storm door.

“One second. Gimme a second,” a bodyless voice answered the knock.

Shit! There was that chill again. It was the voice. His voice. Just as he could not calculate the millions he had confiscated over the years, Joe could not count the hours he’d listened to that voice accuse and cajole, prompt and prod, jab and parry. He was tempted to leave the receipt in the mailbox and run, scream for Healy to send in a check.

But Joe Serpe hadn’t run from anything in his life and he wasn’t about to start now. Instead he cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed his face up close to the storm door. He looked at the framed collage of family photos on the staircase wall.

“Motherfucker!” he hissed. “It’s him.”

It seemed to take about a week for Healy to get downstairs with the money. At first, there was no sign of recognition in Healy’s faded gray eyes. The lack of recognition wasn’t lost on Joe. Maybe his invisibility was shielding him. But in his heart, Joe knew God would never pass up such a rich opportunity to fuck with his life. Sure enough, just as Healy began forking over the cash, a light went on in his eyes. Bob Healy’s pupils got small as pinheads. His mouth formed that wry, mischievous smile Joe had learned to despise.

“Fuck if it isn’t Joe ‘the Snake’ Serpe.”

Frank was finishing his entries into the computer when he noticed just how dark it was outside the office. He considered giving Joe a buzz to see how that last delivery was coming, but he decided against it. He didn’t want to insult the man. Anyone who could do buy and bust operations in the worst of the worst neighborhoods in New York City could handle a little snow and darkness. Frank had already decided to throw Joe an extra twenty for doing the stop. That would bring Joe’s pay for the day up to a nice round three hundred bucks. All in all it had been a nice payday for everyone. Besides, Frank had big troubles of his own, things he didn’t even want to think about.

Frank checked the window again. The snow seemed to be slowing its pace. Yet Frank felt unusually ill at ease. It was certainly true that he didn’t like having trucks out in the dark and that early in his tenure Joe had been a bit of a hot-rodder, but that wasn’t it. Frank loved reclamation projects, Joe best among them. Everybody who’d ever worked for him had been a reclamation project of one sort or another. There was Fat Stan the Psycho Man who had managed to get off welfare and get his life back in order while earning his keep for Mayday. What a character, Frank laughed, remembering the day he found Stan thumbing a ride outside the grounds of Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital.

Then there was King Kong. The jury was still out on him. He hadn’t shown up for work today. While it wasn’t the first time, it wasn’t exactly a chronic problem either. Even though the kid claimed to like working with Frank, he wondered if Cain wasn’t still feeling the sting of being tossed off the tugboat by Joe. He liked the kid a whole lot, but Frank had always been a little shaky about his decision to move Kong from working around the yard to hose monkey.

The group home was just a little ways down Union Avenue. If something went wrong in the yard, Frank could have someone from the home there in five minutes. The truck was something else altogether. It wasn’t the work itself. Christ, you could train a monkey to pull a hose to a fill and back. Hence the job title. No, it was the ‘what ifs’ that gave Frank pause. What if the driver got injured? What if the truck were robbed? What if there was a spill? An accident?

From the first, Frank understood there was potential for disaster written all over taking the kid on. The people at the home had made Cain’s history and limitations abundantly clear. The kid had always been polite and respectful around him and Joe, maybe a little less so with the other drivers. Then again, they’d been a little less respectful of him. That seemed a pretty normal response to Frank’s way of thinking. Yet Frank knew Cain had a history of sometimes striking out in anger and for going AWOL. But the kid’s goofy enthusiasm was contagious and King Kong did good work. After his latest no-show, however, maybe the time had come to admit defeat and put the kid back in the yard.

Then in the stillness of the snow and night, Frank heard the comforting low rumble of the tugboat turning onto Union. A moment later, headlights flashed through the office windows.

Frank’s words rang in Cain’s head: “When a man fucks up, he gotta take what’s comin’. A real man steps up. He don’t wait to get found out.”

Cain knew he was wrong for not showing up today without telling Frank. It killed him to disappoint Frank. He liked Joe Serpe a lot, but he loved Frank. Frank treated him like he wished his own father could. Frank taught him things. Joe taught him things, too, like how Serpe meant snake in Italian, but the things Frank taught him were life things, man things. Frank treated him special. His parents, the people at the homes, they all treated him like a dead end street. He didn’t have the right words for it the way Frank would. The people who worked with him at the homes, even the really nice ones, were sort of doing what they had to, but like in front of a brick wall, almost like he wasn’t there. The thing about Frank was that he treated Cain like he could learn anything.

That’s why he knew he had to come talk to Frank. It was what a man did. And Cain Cohen was a man in spite of his being M.R., slow, delayed, challenged, handicapped or any of those other stupid words that meant he was different. The problem was he’d hidden himself in a secret place where no one would be able to find him and now he was frozen stiff, starving and tired. At first, the chill made some of the hurt go away. Now it made it worse. Finally, he’d gotten the courage up to apologize to Frank for being bad, but just as he started crawling out of his secret place, he heard a truck pulling into the yard. He would have to wait a little while longer. For Frank, he would wait as long as it took.

Joe nosed in, swung around and backed up between the blue and red Macks. The constant beep, beep, beep of the reverse warning horn cut through him like fork tines scraping on an empty plate. There wasn’t much clearance and it was dark and there was ice on his mirrors, but he didn’t figure his night could get much worse. The tugboat slid in neatly between the trucks on either side. Joe remembered a time when he was afraid to even put the damned truck in reverse. Then there was the time he got cocky about his ability to squeeze through tight spaces and creased the side of the tugboat’s tank. Frank was less than pleased about that.

He pulled out the yellow parking brake on the dash. A loud pssst filled the night as the air brakes spit out excess pressure, kicking up a spray of snow and dust. He turned off the ignition key and choked the engine silent. Gathering up his paperwork, cell phone and map, Joe jumped down off the metal grate for the last time that day.

“A face from the past,” Frank teased. “I was gonna organize a fuckin’ search party.”

“Here.” Joe threw down his paperwork, map and phone in front of Frank.

“Hey, I’m sorry about that last stop.”

“Not as sorry as me.”

“I’m throwing you an extra twenty,” Frank said, figuring to lift Joe’s spirits.

“Keep it.”

“What the fuck’s eatin’ you?”

“You wanna know?”

“No, Joe, I asked cause I enjoy the sound of my own voice. Yeah, I wanna know.”

“Healy,” Joe barked, “the last stop in Kings Park.”

“What about it?”

“Bob Healy was the lead detective on my case.”

“Fuck! He was the-”

“That’s right,” Joe said, a sad smile spreading across his face. “Detective Robert Healy, Internal Affairs’ best and brightest. He was the guy that made the case against me and Ralphy.”

Even after four years, it hurt like a son of a bitch; the old disgrace rained over him like a shower of bee stings. It’s how far you let yourself fall, Father John had once told him, that’s the measure of a man. And Joe Serpe had fallen quite a long ways.

He thought about Vinny every day, but Joe had good stretches now, sometimes whole months, without revisiting his own fall. Now it was all back-the hearings, the testimony, the loss of his family, his shield, his pension, his self-respect, Ralphy’s suicide. And all because Ma had misplaced a delivery ticket. God just couldn’t resist fucking with him.

“C’mon,” Frank snapped. “Drinks are on me. Lugo’s, here we come.”

Joe Serpe didn’t have it in him to protest. He would have preferred to drink alone, but he had the rest of the weekend for that.

Frank shut down his PC, clicked off the lights and locked the door. Joe went ahead of him to check the trucks and make sure all the tank valves were in the closed position and that all the keys had been removed from the cabs. There had been a lot troubles in the neighborhood recently, minor stuff, mostly. The vandalism hadn’t turned serious yet, just a few broken windows and some artful graffiti. But a misplaced ignition key and one opened valve could lead to a few thousand gallons of fuel oil on the ground. As he inspected the trucks, Joe thought he heard something moving in the yard. He whipped the flashlight around, cutting broad gashes in the darkness. He saw nothing. Seeing Healy again had really spooked him. The sooner he got to Lugo’s the better.

Cain didn’t pick his head up until Frank and Joe had locked the yard gates behind them. He listened to their cars pulling away. His heart was still racing from when Joe had heard him slip. Joe had shined the flashlight right over his head. That Joe hadn’t seen him filled Cain with a kind of pride. His special hiding spot was so good that not even a real detective could find him. When the swell of pride vanished, Cain began to panic.

He knew Frank wouldn’t fire him if he could just talk to him. Frank understood better than anybody the way it was with Cain, how he acted bad sometimes. The thing was, he hadn’t wanted to talk in front of Joe Serpe. He thought Joe was still mad at him from when he had Frank take him off the tugboat. Frank swore up and down that Joe wasn’t mad at him, that he had problems of his own. But Cain was smart enough to know people didn’t tell the truth sometimes when they didn’t want to hurt your feelings. He also knew that like his parents, people got rid of you when they were mad at you. Or, like Mr. French, they just hit you.

Now what was he going to do? He was getting so cold and hungry and everybody was going to be mad at him. Cain knew what would happen if he didn’t get back to the group home soon. They would call his parents and they would get real mad. The people at the home were probably already mad, because they got in trouble when the tards ran away. Sometimes, no matter why you ran, they sent you to a new place. They couldn’t do that to him, not this time. He had a real job, one he loved. He had Frank.

Cain noticed that tears were pouring out of his eyes and his nose was so stuffed he could hardly breathe right. He was shaking, his chest heaving. The thought of losing everything he had worked so hard for was too much to take. He had finally found a place where he belonged, where his being slow didn’t mean so much. Cain knew there was only one thing to do. He had to get back to the home. That’s what Frank would want him to do, to be a man.

Then, just as he began to crawl out from his special hiding place, he heard a rattling from the big padlock and thick chain that held the gate shut. He heard voices. He scooted back in his secret niche and listened. Now he knew what to do to set things right. No one would be mad at him anymore.

It was near 11:00 when Frank and Joe shook hands goodnight.

“Shit,” Frank said, trying to focus on his watch. “It’s Valentine’s Day. My wife’s gonna kill me. I hope those roses I sent her will do the trick.”

“Good luck.”

“You’re pretty fucked up, Joe. You gonna be okay to drive?”

“It’s only a few blocks. I’ll be fine.”

“Famous last words.”

“God wouldn’t let me off that easy, Frank.”

“See ya Monday morning.”

“Monday,” Joe repeated, beginning to walk to his car. “Hey,” he stopped, calling to Frank. “You ever hear from the kid today?”

“Nah.”

“I still feel bad about throwing him off-”

“Forget it, Joe. Get some sleep.”

Cain’s eyes fluttered. Face down in a few inches of yellow-dyed diesel, he should have been coughing but couldn’t. He wasn’t breathing very well either. It was the weirdest thing. He knew he should be in a lot of pain, but he just wasn’t. He had been beat up real bad, so bad he couldn’t remember much. He was cold mostly. Only his head hurt a little. He knew he should have been scared, but he wasn’t.

He had better get up, he thought. He couldn’t move. His hands and feet wouldn’t work. Now he panicked. He tried screaming.

“Frank!”

But when he opened his mouth, diesel rushed in. He couldn’t cough. He was drowning from inside and out. His eyes were stinging and the taste of the diesel was hard to take. His tongue was thick and slow.

“Frank!” he tried again.

Again the diesel rushed in and he couldn’t spit it back out.

He moved the only part of him that worked anymore. He banged his head against the tank as hard as he could, hoping morning had come and that Frank or Joe could hear him. He split his scalp wide open, his blood mixing into the diesel.

Silence.

He stopped banging. Even if morning had come, no one would be there. It was Sunday. The panic was gone.