by Peter Selgin
First, we dragged in the heavy-duty industrial belt-sander that you pushed like a lawn mower. As I helped Sugar carry it up the steps into the house, its metal edges clawed my palms. Sugar always went up first, walking backward like a scuttling crab. He was powerful — especially for a man in his sixties — and puffed like a steer through his nostrils. He told stories of his days in the French navy, how they persecuted him for being born in Italy, called him “Mussolini” and “Il Duce,” gave him all the worst jobs, made him box. Sugar’s arms were as thick as my legs. I saw them flex beside the bright red sawdust bag that hung limp, like a deflated punching bag, under the belt sander. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips. The way he carried that sander you’d have thought he was carrying nothing heavier than that cigarette, while I struggled, afraid I’d lose my grip and tumble back with the sander on top of me, body crushed, blood and bouillon seeping out of me into the snow.
The day Mr. Quick told me we’d have to stop spending so much time together we were hiking the railroad tracks, collecting blue glass insulators that had fallen from telephone and telegraph lines, keeping the best ones and throwing the rest into the weeds like fishermen throwing small fry back into the sea. We were walking by the ruins of an old hat factory when he told me. His voice was quiet, matter-of-fact. I kept saying, “Why?” But I knew; at least, I had some idea. I’d wondered if he might really be queer, and if I might be queer myself, though I didn’t think so, not really, since I liked girls. Still, these things had occurred to me. And it had occurred to me too that people were saying and thinking things, even my own mother. But I didn’t care. Honestly, I didn’t.
Jack said it was for my own good, that someday, when I was old enough, I’d understand. By then we’d both be men, and we could be friends again.
It wasn’t fair, I said. What did it matter how old I was? I cursed up at the hat factory smokestack. Jack said, “You’re acting like a child.” He was right.
I went back to the van for the rotary sander, a smaller machine for sanding corners and against walls. But before using it I had to scrape. I had to go around on my knees with a little scraper scraping inside closets and in corners where even the rotary sander wouldn’t reach, scraping gobs of plaster and leveling the uneven spots: you’d be amazed how sloppy new floors can be. I scraped until my fingers turned into claws around the wooden handle and my blisters burst, bleeding pink, until my knees wailed under the flimsy kneepads Sugar gave me to wear.
By then Sugar had the belt sander going, pushing it back and forth, back and forth, his curly hair white with sawdust already, the bright red bag burgeoning, his unlit cigarette dangling (he never actually smoked them), sweat leaking out of his forehead, his breath painting clouds in the sawdusty air. When I’d finished scraping I moved on to running the rotary sander. I wore earplugs and a paper mask to keep the sawdust out of my nostrils, but it got in there anyway.
When you sand floors all your senses turn against you. Noise, dust, heat, smell, pain, hunger, thirst, exhaustion. The sawdust turned to putty in my nose; my ears ached from the noise; my skinny arms turned to rubbery celery stalks as the rotary sander twisted and turned. That rotary sander hated me; we hated each other. Now and then, through the sawdusty corner of my eye, I’d look up at Sugar, hoping to see him switch off his machine and announce lunch, and at the same time hoping he wouldn’t catch me looking or see me losing my battle with the rotary sander, being a fruitcake.
I wasn’t in school the day they announced that Mr. Quick would no longer be teaching us. I was home sick in bed with a fever. It was late May. A few days earlier I’d gone swimming by myself in Bennington Pond and got hypothermia. The water must have been around sixty-five degrees. When I came out I couldn’t stop shivering. The coldness had sunk into my bones. I could hardly walk. I knocked on Mr. Quick’s door. He sat me under a blanket in front of his stove and gave me a mug of hot Chinese tea. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you,” he said. “Have you been hearing things, about us? Has anyone said anything to you, asked you anything?” I shook my head no, no, though people had. My teeth were chattering. The next day I woke up with a fever.
I learned about Mr. Quick resigning or getting fired (I never found out which) the day I went back to school, from Clyde Rawlings, on the bus. He told me how Miss Rathbone came into the classroom with Mr. Dillard, the vice principal, and told everyone to hand in the journals they’d been keeping for Mr. Quick, that they wouldn’t be needing them anymore, to get out their grammar books.
As soon as the bus pulled up to the school, I jumped off and started running. I ran all the way to Bennington Pond, to Mr. Quick’s cottage. The door was open. Aside from a few books everything was gone. The Japanese-style table. The chess set. The blue glass insulators arranged on the kitchen shelf. He’d left behind one oil lamp, its glass chimney darkened with soot, wick burned to a nub. The smell of tea-soaked wood lingered. I rifled through the books scattered across the blue-painted floor, old paperbacks, their brown pages crumbling as I flipped through them in search of a letter, a note, something.
For a long while I stood holding the last book, the light through the windowpanes licking a warm streak down the side of my face, making little rainbows on the floor. I felt the cottage growing smaller and me growing smaller in it, until I thought I would disappear. After a while I sat down. I sat there until the sun rose higher in the sky and the rainbows dissolved and the blue green floor planks grew dusky, like waves in a storm.
I sat in the cottage all morning and deep into the afternoon, until the windowpanes gleamed with ruddy, low-angle sunlight, and my stomach growled. Then I got up and walked out the door.
I was halfway down the flagstone path when a primitive urge took hold of me. I bent down, picked up a stone, and hurled it, smashing a window. It felt good so I did it again. I broke another window, and another. I kept breaking windows until there were no more windows left to break.
A month later I got a letter from Mr. Quick, postmarked Kyoto, Japan. It was a short letter, and there was no return address. He said he hoped I was doing well and that he was very sorry for having left so “abruptly” but that he’d felt it was “for the best.” After that I checked the mail every day, hoping there’d be another letter, a postcard, anything. Nothing came.
I never heard from Mr. Quick again.
I stopped giving a damn about things and spent lots of time in my room. That summer my mom got me the job with Mr. Bulfamante. She did it, she said, to get me out of the house, but I knew she was worried. When school started again, my grades went to hell. I didn’t care. My mother spoke to Mr. Bulfamante. I overheard her in our kitchen one afternoon, talking under her breath about Mr. Quick. Sugar said, “Leave him to me. I take care of him.”
Sugar didn’t stop. He never stopped. He kept pushing the belt sander back and forth, back and forth. I couldn’t stop, either. I had to keep going, the sawdust turning to gold nuggets in my nostrils. I was sixteen, thinking this was what my life had come to. I’d blown my grade-point average. I’d never go to college; I’d never do anything. While fighting the rotary sander, I thought about what a disappointment I was to everyone, especially to myself. I wondered what Jack would think if he saw me here, now, and wondered if he’d really been queer, if that was the only reason why we’d been friends, and why he’d left so suddenly. That’s when the tears came, mixing with the sawdust. I worried that Sugar would see me. The rotary sander kept whipping and twisting, dragging me along the floor like a parachute in a stiff wind. I’d done only one bedroom. I had five rooms to go and all those closets.
Hours later, after every floor was sanded and we’d applied the first coat of sealer, Sugar said, “Bouillon time!” meaning time for lunch. We stood in the cold air by the back doors of the van sipping the soup from our thermos cups.
During lunch breaks Sugar would give me boxing lessons. It was all part of his plan to defruitcake me. He had two pairs of old boxing gloves, the leather dried and torn. We boxed in our T-sh
irts. The scratchy gloves pasted my forearms and shoulders with welts. By the end of a sparring session the skin on my arms would be red and raw like a canned tomato.
We’d use the empty new garages as boxing rings, bobbing, jabbing, and feinting on the cold, smelly cement. Sugar never hit me as hard as he could have; he always pulled his punches. Still, even a pulled punch from Sugar could hit pretty hard. After sparring, Sugar would rub down my arms and shoulders with wintergreen oil — he always kept a bottle handy — his thick, calloused fingers kneading away at my ravaged flesh, his breaths breaking like snorts through his nose. The minty liniment stung like fire when Sugar rubbed it into my welts.
I’d gotten good enough to avoid most of Sugar’s swift jabs and even get in a few of my own once in a while. Instead of flinching or growing teary eyed like me, Sugar would smile through the bobbing cigarette.
After lunch that day we were dodging and feinting when suddenly Sugar asked me about Mr. Quick. “You ever hear from your fruitcake friend?” he asked.
Something about the way he said it, the glint of a smile in his eyes, the hungry look, made me lose my concentration. I lowered my guard. Sugar’s right hook hit my chin, sending me tumbling backward into the garage door, which we’d raised halfway to let out the sealer fumes that leaked in from the house. I banged my head hard into the metal bar running across it and sat myself down on the icy cement, holding my head, colored lights dancing around me like candied fruit in an exploded fruitcake.
Sugar stood in front of me. “Okay?” he said.
I nodded. But I was crying; I couldn’t help it. Tears dripped down my face. I didn’t care. It wasn’t just the pain; it was everything.
Sugar put a thick, sawdusty arm around me. “Ya bum,” he said. He said it with affection, which only made me cry even harder.
Then I was gone; I wasn’t there anymore, in that cementsmelling garage, on that hard, clammy floor. I was swimming, kicking up white plumes of water, halfway to the island with the miniature stone lighthouse. The water was cold and clean and beautiful. I lay on the flat rock, the breeze caressing me. Then I was sitting with my legs folded in front of your Japanese-style table, smelling that odd fermented-wood smell, lamps burning, stove roaring, sipping smoky Chinese tea, gazing across the chessboard into your eyes and waiting to hear you say, “Checkmate!” We were on the floor then, wrestling, me locked under your arms, looking up at you looking down at me, smiling under your thick black mustache, my shoulders pinned to the wide-planked, blue green floorboards, adrift on that dusky wooden sea. Helpless, happy. Happier than I’d ever been, or would be again.
OUR CUPS ARE BOTTOMLESS
HE ROSE, SHOWERED, SHAVED, put in his bridge.
He dressed in corduroy and plaid. He went into the kitchen. He saw the papers arranged across the kitchen table, in the shadow of the strongbox. He stood at the sink, dampened some rags, and went into the garage.
He heard a rustling sound coming from a pile of dead leaves under some old tires. He imagined a squirrel. He rolled the rags into tubes and shoved them into the crack under the garage door. He took the large red can of gasoline that supplied the lawn mower and topped off the Plymouth’s tank. He smelled the rough, pink smell of gasoline.
He went back into the house. He shut off the water, the gas, the electricity. He put on a yellow raincoat. He picked up a bundle of stamped letters bound with a red rubber band and, burying it under his raincoat, stepped into the rain.
Dear less-than-dear Vera:
A quick and final note to tell you no: this had nothing to do with us. In a sense I’d been planning it for years. As Frost said, “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” Only I don’t like quarrels. Better to be kind than to be right? How ’bout better to be dead. …
He followed the rivers of mud down the steep hill into town. He felt the rain rushing down his face, the sweat gathering under his breathless parka, the tips of his shoes growing wet. He touched the letters close to his breast to see that they were dry. He saw his breath mingle with the fog. He was halfway down the steep hill and could barely see the outlines of sad brick that were the town. He felt the wash of impatient cars dampen his trouser legs. He watched the smokestack of an abandoned hat factory rise up through the fog, a giant, erect brick middle finger stuck into the gray sky. He felt his knees bobbing outward as he tried to slow his descent. He heard, or thought he heard, the roar of muddy rivers colliding under a steel bridge.
Dear Lansing:
Something of a shock, I’m sure, but not much of a shock, not after the gout, the diabetes, the strokes, the arthritis, the tinnitus, the no smoking, the no drinking, the no cholesterol, the no sleep, the inexplicable hard-ons (except on those rare occasions when they might be welcome), the EKGs, the CAT scans, the colonoscopies, the upper and lower GI series, the catheters (ouch!), the jars of Metamucil and Sominex and aspirin. … If you own stocks in pharmaceuticals, I suggest now is the time to unload them. …
He smelled, or imagined he could smell, coffee brewing.
He arrived soaked from his knees down. He dropped the damp letters into a mailbox. He ran across the street, under the watchful gaze of the steel bridge’s girders, into the Café of the Two Rivers, which everyone in the town called the Two Rivers Café.
He took off his parka, hung it, and sat on the far left counter stool. He read on the menu the words:
“Our Cups Are Bottomless.”
He ordered eggs over easy, bacon, home fries, white toast, coffee.
… Doris:
Probably you think I’m more of a bastard now than ever. So be it. I make no claims for the transformational powers of death: if I make good compost I’ll be pleased. What I want from you is not understanding or forgiveness or flowers on my grave, just the opportunity to clear the air on a few matters. But first let me say how touched I was to receive your note after my stroke. …
He watched the rain. He considered that the water would be good for the grass in the backyard. Just last week he’d spread new seeds and planted a row of barberry bushes to keep the neighbor’s snotty-faced children at bay. The neighbors were not likely to be a problem now; few things were likely to be a problem. Still, he hoped the bushes would thrive …
List of jobs:
Radar technician (USN-1944), mill-lathe operator, cardboard-box-factory foreman, landlord, plumber, plasterer, hatband-factory foreman, grease monkey, stock trader, estate planner, pond dredger, gutter repairman, wire-coat-hanger-factory foreman, salvage and antiques dealer, candidate for first selectman, candidate for second selectman, amateur butcher, baker, candlestick maker, leaf raker, driveway plower, bricklayer, floor sander, reciter of off-color limericks —
There once was a man from Stanboul
Who soliloquized thus to his tool:
“First you robbed me of wealth,
Then you took all my health,
And now you won’t pee, you old fool!”
… emergency-room patient, witness, power-of-attorney holder, justice of the peace, father, stepfather, grandfather, step-grandfather, adulterer, uninvited guest, crank, crackpot, curmudgeon, whistler in the dark, rope pisser-upper, hummer of petrified tunes, quoter of Ogden Nash:
Any hound a porcupine nudges
Can’t be blamed for harboring grudges.
… brass-widget-factory assistant foreman …
The eggs were delivered to him, one of them running. He took his knife and sliced down the center of it, letting the yellow yolk spill into his potatoes. He thought of abscesses, brain surgery.
… plunger of toilets, mopper of floors, burner of toast, carver of turkeys, sealer of driveways, licker of stamps, breaker of circuits …
A man sat next to him, smoking. He didn’t wish to move, nor did he wish to inhale the man’s smoke. He gave the man as much of his back as possible.
… pumper of sumps, catcher of moles, digger of holes …
His coffee was thrust before him, his bottomless cup. He poured sugar into a spoon and watc
hed it spill over the sides like sand over the sides of a dump truck.
… digger of moles, catcher of holes, smeller of molds …
He poured milk from the stainless-steel dispenser, which, being poorly designed, dribbled as it poured. He redesigned it swiftly in his head (no spout; small notch at lip) while watching the milk billow smokelike into the coffee.
… breather of carbon monoxide …
He compared the color of the coffee in his cup with that of the muddy rivers fulminating beyond the plate-glass window.
… Frankly, Vera, I don’t see how you can blame me for my few transgressions in light of your more elaborate displays of deceit. But I’m not writing to dispute anything. Everyone wants to be remembered well, and I’m no exception. I could never stand the thought of anyone hating me, even strangers, even the man who gives me stamps at the post office. …
He watched the rain. Rainy days are good for the soul, he thought. The rain makes good little defeatists of us all. Only born defeatists do it when the sun shines.
List of wives:
Doris, faithful and dull, cooker of plain meals, maker of even plainer love. A beautiful body largely wasted. Smoked heavily all her life; now dying of lung cancer. What a heart, what a good lady, impossibly good. Couldn’t have done better; couldn’t have done worse. Did worse. Married Vera. Greek goddess. Greek bitch. Broke me like a dish: you know the Greeks, the way they stomp on dishes when they dance? That was me under her heels. But she could make me laugh. And that beautiful, pear-shaped behind of hers. Could not cook worth a dime. Would bake spaghetti and broil eggs. Nasty to her children. In both marriages I was faithful half the time. Thirtyeight combined years of marriage, four affairs. Not a bad record, or a good one, depending which way you’re counting …
