Revelations

Tailgating it out of Joliet on the 66 bypass, up through the gears on the two-speed, Oswald is wingdinging at a cool 70 on the level, which is not bad for a full van plus seven bicycles and two dressers under canvas. If an inspector spots him, his ass is grass.

"Cram and jam, I'm your moving man," sings Oswald not too tunefully and with the accental overtones of Jimmy Dean. He pulls the air horn as he blasts by one of them there beetle bugs. Right blinker on, he cuts it close to give a thrill. Flashes his trailer lights because it's a woman driving, a woman with good legs, as Oswald can see from his high perch. Oh, what he has seen from where he sits.

Weigh stations closed, sweat drying in the early-morning air, Oswald unwinds. Lights a Swisher Sweet and chews the tip. He's on Bennies and ten cups of coffee and his heart goes pumpety-pump. Cut that out, he says. He counts his money in his mind. The van's loaded too heavy on one axle, which will mean a fine if he's caught. Balance that against the fact that he filled his tanks with diesel before he's got the final moving weight and he's still ahead. A fat cat on a greased bat.

It has been a long night in a long summer. He had to unload 10,000 cubes at the warehouse before he could fill up for the Chicago run. Which meant he had to pay two helpers time and a half (continued on page 130) Reavelations (continued from page 123) plus windshield time; and the dispatcher in Joliet, an uptight white knight who tried to run things his own way, gave him two rummies who would rather drink than lift. Oswald had to kick ass every half hour. Then he started As drinking with them. Out of fear, as he admitted to himself, because he dreaded lifting finger biters like Hide A Beds unless he was working with real pros who would rather drop the bitch if it started to slip. Whereas your alkies and college kids would hang on in desperate faith as 500 pounds of property gathered momentum and came rolling downstairs to trap the bottom man. Which was how Duffy got castrated.

So Oswald is filled with conflicting chemicals on this morning outside Joliet, and when a bus tries to pass him on an upgrade, Oswald pushes the accelerator to the floor and makes the fucker work for it. As always, the bus roars on. Oswald blinks his headlights to signal for the cut-in, but the driver is pissed and refuses to get back in line until 500 yards ahead. Oswald longs for the time when he will own a rig so powerful that it will run right up the butt of a Greyhound bus. Please, Lord, he asks, just once.

Oswald is country folks, southern-Tennessee folks. His hair slicks back in a modified Presley. He wears cowhide boots and Levi suits. He carries at all times a comb in his upper-left jacket pocket. A special holster sewn under his cab seat by a redheaded chick from St. Louis cuddles his long-nosed police .38 (trigger pull over three pounds--never adjusted). The map compartment holds two leather-covered blackjacks, black from ancient sweat and blood. Also a hunting knife in a canvas sheath, two Hares, one carton of Red Man chewing tobacco, one box of Ajax prophylactics, a Chicago street guide and the weight papers for the home office.

Oswald pops another Benny and the light brightens in his eyeballs. He smiles at himself in the mirror on the sun visor. He sees a chunky blond man with wrinkles around the eyes. Looking at him from a distance, you'd place him as a young punk. But close up, the face shows fatigue and overwork. He's had his own rig for three years, since he was 21, and it bears down on a man to pay off $15,000 in that time. "Give me a hump strap and a jockstrap and I'll move the world." So says this modern Archimedes, only half joking.

It has not been too long since he stood with red clay caked between his toes and a mule team at his command. "Make the leader take the mud," his daddy told him just before he died of a strange disease that made him turn yellow all over. Oswald offered up the cooking jug to his daddy's lips and, credit to the old man, he was dead before he refused a drink. Which prompted Oswald to drink that jug and the lightning in the butter crock. Drunk for a week out in the pines, where the sun never shines. Discovered by his older brother, who held his head under branch water until Oswald damn near drowned, and Brother wanted to know why he hadn't buried their daddy as befitting any human being. To which Oswald replied, in a new gesture of independence, that he'd been too drunk those seven days to do anything except fuck his own fist. This remark brought the usual and expected and almost irrelevant cuff on the ear.

Oswald was moved into town, off the 30 acres (which was sold by the bank to a church organization). Big brother owned a hauling service. That is, he owned a truck, an old 1936 Diamond T that could still pull close to a ton on a 30 percent grade. It was there at the age of 14 that Oswald began what seemed to him to be his God-given task of lifting, packing, loading and unloading, continuously sweating. They carried tree stumps, garbage, furniture, dirt, gravel, feed and fertilizer bags and lumber; and, on occasion, they would fit on the high sides and deliver hogs to market, an episode both brothers enjoyed, for it was fun to try to run a cattle prod up a pig's ass.

That first summer, before he had to go to high school, they netted enough to start payments on a 'dozer. Meaning big brother would rent himself and it out on contract to clear land, and Oswald would be prime mover for the Diamond T Thus, a 14-year-old red-neck piss-ant who has labored more than half his life survives through luck and strength and natural craftiness (i.e., the ability not to lift your share when your gut muscles twinge and signal hernia).

It was Oswald's opportunity to take the transition offered any boy with speed and muscle, that temporary, usually finite and limited experience of the high school hero. The game of football itself was meaningless. No two players could hit as hard as a mule could kick, and the occasional fist under the nose guard drew less blood than a plow handle snapped under the jaw. In his naïveté, Oswald could not imagine cutting up the turf without purpose; and after the first full scrimmage, he went across the field on his hands and knees, replacing the divots and patting the rich grass. A simple gesture, at first laughed at, then worshiped and imitated.

Able to hump up to three fertilizer bags on his back, it was nothing to Oswald to throw a cross-body block and lift a charging guard away from the play. Dynamics, momentum, tension at the moment and, nine times out of ten, he could have blocked out a Big Jimmy. But there came that year, his senior year, his putative all-county, all-state year, when his cleats caught in the grass, his body went one way and the knee joint the other and vomit pain convulsed his stomach. His life changed direction there that instant, and he knew it. No more a piece of valuable property, no more to be scouted and praised, the letters from coaches turned conciliatory, then stopped. The leg stayed in a cast for three months, came out wrinkled, stinking, weak. Not the leg of a hero. When healed and rebuilt, it seemed almost normal. Not trustworthy enough, however, to promote investment. The leg became a barometer for storms, aching before rain. His medal and scar, one and the same, as they always are. Limping when fatigued and strutting when not. Back to what seemed an inevitable way of life at the age of 18.

All this being the fashion of his wanderings through five more years as straight and dull as highways. Bred on Western music and tough reactions, he never even questions himself and his temperament until the Bennies blow his mind, force (with caffeine) too many thoughts at once through his brain cells, so that there on 66, he sees apocalypse, shakes, steers around ten-ton grasshoppers with mantis jaws, hauls the rig into a cloverleaf and coasts to a stop on the road shoulder, there to sit and watch the show in the sky until a cop pulls up and moves him on, so forcing him back to quote reality unquote.

Tired, wary of his own destruction, he rides into Chicago a different man, hoping for rest.

Comes this July day set for steam--this same day that finds a vibrating Oswald steering the van--and Hairston is headed early in the morning to the warehouse, where a loading job is open at three bucks an hour. Projections each, energies on a colliding course, one drives, the other walks. Hairston is thinking ... who knows what? Hairston lives by his nose, touch, intuition. Cut away from a sense and a function, he leans on others. He watches as Oswald vaults to the dock. He sees a relatively short and powerful Whitey who walks with a limp and stares hyper around him. Hand signals to Hairston say join that one. He does, offering neither hand nor glance.

"You can't get me no better?" Oswald cries. "A deaf-and-dumb spade? I feel like an ant that's going to crawl over and bite hisself." Laughs from the freight men. "I got mudio cubes to dump here first, boy. Come on."

Unloading is no problem. It all goes into storage, which means out of the trailer, up to five, off and stacked. They break the tail gate down carefully. One chain busts and Hairston puts his back against the whole mess, saving all except one bicycle. Oswald gives a hog-call thanks. Suuuueee. He ropes the rest in and firms it up, goes to pat Hairston on (continued on page 230) Reavelations (continued from page 130) the shoulder but holds that gesture back.To work. Tail gate finally off, the doors open and reveal an Oswald-stacked interior, tight as a sparrow's cunt. An improvised system of checks and counter-pressures that fits furniture and boxes together like a puzzle. One piece on each tier holds the clue to breakdown.

By noon they have cleared the van. Chicago heat takes the temp up to 200 near the roof (which is where Hairston ends up working, handing crap down)."Take a break, boy," says Oswald. No reaction. "Chow down." Still nothing. Oswald wipes his hands together, the universal dust-off, and Hairston nods and smiles. They move apart, Oswald to Shuban's Tavern for beer and a burger, Hairston to his brown lunch bag.

Oswald is all right as long as he is sweating. It is these times of cooling off that tear at him now. This bar he knows, these boys he knows. Why the jitters? Dean is over there cracking an egg into his beer and telling of his latest wreck. He has totaled out three rigs in the last year. Dean moves his hands like a pilot after a mission, takes in all the bar with his eyes. He was deadheading back from Oklahoma. Not his fault (never is).

But some reservoir of acid has been loosed in Oswald's brain pads this day and he sees not Dean's wreck but one of his own witnessing (dreaming?). As if fed on snow or bhang, Oswald leaves the bar in spirit and remembers a burning cab deep in a ditch, fire all over, and the driver trapped by the legs, his head out the window, the man cool in logic until his hair was burning, as he ordered someone, anyone, to shoot him. Which no one did, because that would be murder of the sorriest sort and who wants that kind of rap? So a silent congregation high on the road shoulder watched him burn. At the last, Oswald threw rocks down at the blackening head, hoping to knock out the poor bastard. Didn't work.

Shake that vision, he tells himself. "I'm tired. I've worked my ass off," he finds his mouth saying. 'Course you have, deed you have, the truckers around him nod, with amusement and no pity. "Well, I have!"he yells.

"Well shit oh dear haven't we all?" Dean challenges.

"Yes! No! I don't know," and out the door stomps Oswald. Only the deepest part of his head hears their laughter. He crosses Halsted Street. I am young and wrinkled, he tells himself. I look at the world through a windshield. I see things different. But there's no room for my difference. I have calcium in my elbows, my shoulders. My chemicals are all wrong.

For the first time, he sits outside the jokes in the dispatcher's office. Cold comes on around his shoulders and chest. He drinks more coffee. When that does no good, he goes for pills, uncaps the plastic vial with shaking hands and drops two on his tongue. He works them down his cotton throat. No sooner taken than he feels a modicum of relief; and as the one-o'clock whistle blows in the stockyards, he is almost ready to haul ass.

He gets a loading order for the Near North Side. "Work late, if you have to. It don't matter. Nobody there except the help. You inventory, they sign."

Oswald reads the estimate sheet and cringes. "You're only giving me half a van and it's a run to Detroit."

"That's right," says the dispatcher.

"And packing? I ain't no packer. You give me one and you pay."

"Uh-uh. I never knew a driver didn't bitch."

"I thought I had a Memphis job."

"That went out this morning."

Shit, thought Oswald, I am tired of arguing. "Give me a packer," he repeats.

"Take that tar baby you had this morning."

"He can't talk or hear, how's he----"

"Best kind, ain't it?" This gets laughs.

"How's he going to pack china?"

"I don't understand you, Ralph. I give you one that can't sass you back and can't hear the shit you give him. And you're unhappy."

Oswald has lost it now and he knows it. Everybody is laughing. Buzz go his ears in anger. Humor is a weapon he despises, can't cope with. He tries one more assault, direct, as usual. "Memphis is my home office. I got some priority."

Done in by efficiency this time. "I called them. It's OK. Wait three days in Detroit after you've dumped this load. If you don't get any orders, they want you to deadhead back."

"Double fuck," is all Oswald can say. This, too, strikes all but him as funny. It is a two-pronged shaft of modern design. Hard as he has worked this summer, one or two sterile trips still could put him below break-even.

"Some companies pay for deadhead mileage." Oswald is thinking out loud.

"Not this one and you know it. On your way."

Fatigue and anger come together somewhere in his stomach. He wants to rip into the old bastard. Who has turned to the phone and forgotten. Adrenaline forges too many thoughts into Oswald's conscience. As he walks out onto the loading dock, he thinks for a moment that he is back in Tennessee at a train station. The smells of creosote, dust, dry wood, even urine, the heat waves that wrap his van in flags of color.

"I'm home," he shouts and shouts again. The dock is still empty and his voice meets no one who can hear. Only Hairston sitting silent and blinking on a stack of burlap pads, and recognition of that sphinx is enough to bring Oswald back. In a sort of amateur's semeiology, he shows Hairston what he wants done; i.e., fold the pads, each type in its own way, the skins in quarters, the burlap in halves, the mats in thirds. Oswald is precise. He decides to let Hairston work while he watches and drinks a Coke. He thinks of himself as a young slyboots whose smarts have always made others work harder than himself.

"I am a trim rat," he chuckles as he ties bowlines around the neat piles Hairston has made along the trailer floor. When they climb into the truck cab, it seems almost that Hairston can hear; he winces as Oswald runs the engine high in neutral to build up air-brake pressure.

"Don't sweat the program," Oswald yells. "I know this motor. I done it over twice." He holds up two fingers victory spread in an attempt to explain, but all he meets are red-veined eyeballs and corneas of mud. "Fuck it," Oswald spits out the window. "Long as you work hard for me. I'll tolerate you."

It is not just any old shack, their destination, but a la-di-da apartment on the Gold Coast. From the front windows, Oswald looks out at the Oak Street Beach. There is a freight elevator for his use and only one maid to watch him. Oswald should be happy. But there is an itching and aching somewhere inside his head. Things do not go perfect. Hairston does not know how to wrap dishes. Oswald puts on a dumb show, hoping to teach him, but the big black hands with scarred knuckles are not gentle with the china. Oswald gives up. "Take your smalls and mediums into the living room. Pack books and shit. I'll do dish packs." He pushes Hairston away.

This is a major defeat. It takes a good half hour to pack a dish barrel, bending over most of the time. With the crap in this kitchen, Oswald has to work for five hours. All along, he becomes more certain that Hairston has played dumb coon. "Never knew one didn't go stupid-ass ignorant when it was convenient." Oswald speaks while leaning into a barrel and his voice echoes deep. He has forgotten himself for the moment, forgotten the maid, who has watched him like a silent Aunt Jemima. He straightens up and grins. Bravado better than retreat, he decides. She stares at him and he looks her back, this big mommy with eyes bred out of some playa. Hate musters in his gut. It is no match for the blankness he sees, his emotion no more relevant than the words once spoken by declarant Colonialists over swamps they thought they could own.

His gaze shifts to his hands. They hold a crystal bowl. Deliberately, he drops it on the floor and the slivers fly past her ankles. "Sorry 'bout that." She sweeps up the mess and Oswald goes on packing.

It is, believe it or not, his first contact with wealth close up. Wedgwood, thick rugs, gilt mirrors, 500 pairs of shoes, three color-television sets. He cannot believe his inventory sheet. Hairston tags the cartons and furniture while Oswald writes the list. Weight means wealth in the moving business: heavy dressers, highboys, appliances deluxe, mirror packs, crates of marble, cubes of trivia. Oswald figures to make a pile on this job.

Loading is not much of a sweat. The freight elevator makes it easy. It is near midnight by the time they are done. Oswald is debating: Does Hairston know about time and a half? It's worth ten bucks. Oswald talks out loud to himself, while Hairston ties the reefer dolly to the last tier. "Question is if you're dumb all around. Take it straight from noon to midnight and it's about thirty-five I owe you. But if you figure time and a half after six, that's another eight or so. What do you think?"

No answer from the big back as it shoves the loading ramp into the slats. Oswald dips thumb and forefinger into his wallet and deals out a ten, a five, a twenty. "I reckon you don't think at all. Here." He gives the cash to Hairston in a careful movement that keeps skin from touching skin. Watches for a reaction. None. Home safe and cheap. "C'mon, boy, let's make the tollway." In the midnight hours, the center stripe doubles. The loneliness of nobody in six lanes. Hairston leans his head and shoulder against the door and sleeps.

"Seems like if I'm good enough to take you back, you might keep your eyes open." The novelty of being able to chew out a deaf-mute has faded. Oswald shuts up and drives.

The sky and road are empty for a while. Cooling down, Oswald closes the window vent slightly. Shivers. He's on nothing now. Is that the problem? His mouth tastes sweet, then bitter. "Don't want to see no more grasshoppers, no, sir."

No sooner has he said it than one scoots across his vision. Big as a house, it disappears suddenly, evaporates. "What, hey?" asks Oswald, and blinks. Then a horse runs alongside the cab. Riderless, with "the head of a lion. Oswald hits the brakes, speeds up. He can't dodge it. Hairston sleeps in spite of all. Oswald considers turning off at the next clover-leaf, but the horse takes a flying jump at an overpass and fades toward the moon.

"You see that?" Oswald asks Hairston. The baby sleeps, so Oswald shakes him. Hairston jumps awake. "All kinds of monsters up there." Hairston does not understand. "I said----" But Hairston's widening eyes make Oswald look back at the road long enough to pull the truck away from the shoulder.

Oswald rolls his window down. He reaches under his seat and pulls the .38 out of its holster. Hairston grabs his own door handle. "Don't shit in your britches. If any of them monsters come along, you shoot." Hairston will not touch the iron. "Goddamn it, I can't drive and aim. Here." No soap. All right; Oswald takes the pistol in his left hand and props his elbow on the frame. "Ain't going to be nothing with seven heads gets Ralph Oswald. No, sir." With that, he accelerates to 70 on the downgrade. "Ride, nigger, ride," he shouts. Hairston stiff-arms with one hand and pushes his door slightly open with the other.

When from behind the moon comes a woman on a scarlet beast, and the woman is in purple and scarlet and pinned with gold, and she drinks blood from a golden cup. "Get that mother!" screams Oswald as he fires into the air, but she swoops down toward them. Now Oswald is half out the door, firing at his engulfer. So close is she now that he can see words written on her forehead. Mystery is one he can decipher. Oswald fires four shots. He looks across at Hairston and points at the sky. But it is too late to expect help from the frozen kid. And like about then, the alpha hits the omega and a fireball climbs not too high, just high enough to singe what might have been there. And puddles of fire on the pavement. And tires stripped like tree bark or skin.