The sweet golden parachute

David Handler
Prologue

Pete woke well before dawn and sat up in his sleeping bag and tried to remember what day it was. He had his regular morning routes and it really did matter. Knuckling his eyes, he tried to recall where he’d been the day before. The Historic District, that’s where. So yesterday must have been Tuesday. And today Wednesday, which meant Route 156, upriver from the Big Brook Road business district.

There, that wasn’t so hard.

Shivering, Pete reached for his pint bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum and drank down several thirsty gulps, peering around in the dark at the dented, moldering Silver Streak that he called home. The old trailer sat out behind Doug’s Sunoco in the empty lot where Doug stashed the beaters he rented out by the day to folks in need. Doug’s was an old-time service station. Two licensed mechanics on duty six days a week. A twenty-four-hour towing operation. Doug even employed acne-encrusted high school kids to pump gas.

Aside from Doug, none of the guys there had anything to do with Pete, since everyone knew he was crazy and you were supposed to stay away from him. They didn’t even know his real name-just called him what everyone else in Dorset called him: the Can Man.

Still swaddled in his sleeping bag, Pete shuffled his way over to the tiny kitchenette, where he kept his cans of chili and Beefaroni and the like. He kept his Crown Pilot crackers and Wonder Bread inside an old saltines tin or the mice would tear into them. He opened some pork and beans and ate them cold right out of the can with two slices of Wonder Bread. Washed it all down with more Captain Morgan and six aspirin. Then, slowly, Pete wriggled his gaunt self out of the bag, groaning from his aches. He pulled on his wool hunting shirt, heavy wool pants and pea coat, fingers fumbling from the arthritis. Stepped into his cracked, ancient work boots. Ran a hand through his iron gray hair, which he trimmed himself with shears; likewise his beard, which was mostly white. His blue eyes were deep set, his nose long and narrow. He had once been quite handsome. The girls had really gone for him. But it had been years since they’d looked at him that way. Or at all.

He was invisible.

This was perfectly okay by him. As long as people stayed away from him, Pete was fine. He just wanted to live his life his own way-no driver’s license, no credit cards, no bank account, no phone, no keys. He was a free man. Didn’t need the hospital. Didn’t need his medication. He had his trailer, his Captain Morgan and his morning rounds. He got plenty of exercise. Kept his mind busy with his numbers. He was fine. Hell, he was probably the happiest he’d ever been.

He hobbled inside. It was barely 6:00 A.M. but Doug was already filling the till and turning on the pumps. Pete rinsed his face in the work sink and drank down a cup of Doug’s strong, hot coffee. By then it was time to saddle up.

Pete made his morning rounds on a mountain bike that he’d found at the dump. It had only one serviceable gear, but it moved. His trailers, a pair of rackety grocery carts that he’d liberated from the A amp;P, were chained to the book rack behind his seat, one behind the other. Doug had put red reflectors on the back of Pete’s trailers and installed a battery-powered headlight on the front of his bike. The beam was feeble, but it gave the early morning drivers some indication that he was there.

It was still dark out when Pete started his way along the shoulder of Big Brook Road. Pete was not quiet. People could hear him and his empty trailers coming from a half-mile away in the predawn country silence. He pedaled, wool knit cap pulled low over his eyes and ears, jacket buttoned up to his throat. It was maybe a degree or two above freezing, and the headlights on the occasional passing car revealed a dense early morning fog. It was supposed to turn warm today, maybe warm enough to melt some of the hard, grimy snowbank that the plowman had built up along the shoulder.

When he reached the river he turned right onto Route 156, a narrow, twisting country road that ran its way north of Dorset into gentlemen’s farm country. He pedaled along through the foggy darkness, a half-pint of Captain Morgan snug inside his jacket pocket. His right knee still throbbed despite the aspirin. He tore cartilage in it playing rugby a hundred million years ago. And his left hip never stopped aching. He’d broken it when he flipped his Porsche late one night in the Italian Alps. The girl with him hadn’t made it. Pete couldn’t remember her name. Didn’t want to remember her name.

He was happy that winter was passing, because the snow hadn’t stopped falling last month and a lot of roads had been plain impassable. Pete got edgy without enough work to do. Mostly, he sat in his trailer all day poring over his personal bible, The World Almanac. Pete just loved The World Almanac. He had studied the bushel production of ten different agricultural products for all fifty states. Charted the distances by car between various cities. From Amarillo to Omaha it was 643 miles. From Cincinnati to New Orleans 786. Pete was very into numbers. As long as he kept his head crowded with numbers he could keep his demons shoved inside of a box, his full weight pressed down on top of the lid. The demons would try to pound their way out. But they were locked inside as long as he concentrated on his numbers. It was only when people started talking to him, asking him things, that the box would spring open and out would pop the demons.

As far as Pete was concerned, there was absolutely nothing wrong with this world that could not be solved by staying away from other people.

He pedaled. Dorset’s recycling truck made its rounds by around eight. Pete would have come and gone by then. The town picked up bundled newspapers and flattened cardboard, which were of no interest to Pete. It was the empty beer and soda cans that were. The bottles, too. Each one carried a nickel deposit on it. And a lot of the rich folk put them out for the Can Man-knowing that this was how he fed himself. Some of them even bagged them separately for him.

He pedaled, steering his little vehicle onto Bittersweet Lane, a cul-de-sac of million-dollar homes that had been built a few years back in old man Talcott’s apple orchards. At the foot of the first driveway he came to, Pete stopped to pick his way through the plastic recycling bins. He left the sardine cans and milk jugs. Took only the soda pop and beer empties, computing the nickel valuations in his head as he stuffed them inside his black plastic trash bags… Ten, fifteen and one more that’s twenty. Twenty-five, thirty…

Pete kept his cans separate from his bottles, and divided his glass bottles from the plastic ones. This saved him time when he hauled his load to the machines at the A amp;P On a morning like this, he might clear twenty dollars… seventy-five, eighty… He’d use it to buy his groceries and his Captain Morgan. Then he’d head back to his trailer for a nap. Maybe mosey on over to the Congregational Church for the free soup kitchen lunch.

Once the weather got warmer, he’d spend his afternoons on a bench in the town green with the sun on his face, feeding the squirrels stale bread until the kids got out of school. He had to steer clear of the kids in town. Some of the boys liked to taunt him and throw rocks at him. But Pete could not defend himself or that tall black trooper lady would descend on him. The little girls were even more worrisome. Even though Pete always tried to mind his own business, all he had to do was look at one of them and the nice ladies in town would send him back to the hospital.

Pete made out like a bandit on Bittersweet this morning. Already, he had $5.90 worth of empties, and he was just getting started. He clattered his way back onto Route 156, heading north.

The occasional car came down the hill toward him in the darkness-workers who had themselves a long commute to Hartford or New Haven. But mostly he was still alone on the narrow, twisting road, puffing for air as he pedaled up the hill, feeling the weight of all those empties he was towing. To keep himself going, he sang his theme song-a rowdy sixteen-bar blues ode to cheap wine that he’d seen King Curtis and Champion Jack Dupree perform together at the Montreux Jazz Festival back in the summer of ’71, just a few months before the King got knifed to death in New York. He remembered the instrumentals perfectly. Champion Jack’s rollicking piano, King’s great big sax. He could remember none of the lyrics. Only its title: Sneaky Pete. That was what made it his song.

“Sneaky Pete!…” he sang to himself. “I’m Sneaky Pete!”

As he pedaled along, singing it, hearing it, it occurred to Pete that music was the only thing he missed about having no property. A good stereo. His blues and jazz albums. He’d had an amazing collection. But the music was still up there inside his head. All he had to do was listen hard.

“Sneaky Pete!…”

Now he’d made it to the foot of her driveway, the compound where the old bitch and her people lived. He climbed off and filled his baskets some more, taking her bottles and cans just like he took anybody else’s. He showed no prejudice. Although he did pause to spit on her mailbox.

This was a ritual he performed every Wednesday.

As Pete continued up 156 on his appointed rounds, pedaling along the shoulder, he could feel the rhythm of his song… Butn-dee-dutn… and count it… Two-three-four… because music was about numbers, too, wasn’t it? As he neared a stretch of wild brush and woodland, he heard a car come up behind, its headlights illuminating him and everything before him in foggy darkness. But the car did not pass him. Just stayed right there behind him, its engine making a throaty burble in the country quiet. Something about the way it sounded struck Pete as oddly familiar, but he didn’t turn around to check it out. Just pulled over at the next driveway, climbed off and started to pick through more empties.

Until suddenly he heard car doors open and swift footsteps coming toward him. Now he started to turn around but before he could move he got whacked on the back of his head by something incredibly hard. The blow staggered him. As he fell to his knees, dazed, blinking in the headlight beams, he felt another crack to his head. Now there were hands. Many hands lifting him up into the air, sweeping him into the woods beyond the roadside brush. Footsteps crashed through the brambles and dead leaves. Two of them. There were two. He could hear them whisper urgently to each other, but could not make out their words. And now they’d dumped him onto the slushy mud of the forest floor and they were cracking him on the head again. He threw his hands up over his head and let out a feeble yowl of pain as he felt another blow and another and then he did not feel anything.

He could hear them running away. Hear one of them crash and fall in the brush, get back up and keep running.

As he lay there, face down in the mud, Pete felt unbelievably huge. As huge as the planet itself. He swore that he could feel the curvature of the earth under his chest. And he could hear a wounded animal moaning softly somewhere far away in the woods. Then he realized with sudden clarity that the moans were coming out of him. There was a rackety, jangling noise nearby. They were doing something to his bike and trailers. Now there were footsteps and they jumped back in their car and went roaring off into the darkness, leaving him behind.

But he was not alone. King and Champion Jack were still there with him.

“I’m Sneaky Pete!”

The blues stayed with him, the beat pounding in his ears. Dee-dum… Bum-dee-dum. Though it was going slower now. And slo-o-o-ower… Dee… Dum-m-m-m…

“I’m Sneaky Pete!”

Until he wasn’t anybody anymore.